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Solving the Riddle

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  Solving the Riddle  The Riddle of neolithic Orkney is that there are insufficient significant structures on Orkney to support the huge numbers of hands that would have been been required to build the Neolithic monuments there, 5000 years ago. The Orkney Riddle is a group of  blogs based on this theme. It is named for the strand of undersea shallow beach that leads off east, from the Pentland Skerries, above,  in the Pentland Firth which may be the last relic of land that once connected Orkney to Scotland. This undersea feature is called the Sandy Riddle.  I started to research the geology of Britain over the last 100,000 years about 4 years ago. I began because I could find no real world evidence that Neolithic people had boats capable of transporting them and their animals across the Pentland Firth to Orkney in numbers sufficient to build the structures in Orkney that they clearly did. In order to get to an evidence based theory of both the Archaeology and t...
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Stones of Brodgar

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 The Stones of Brodgar  When I went to the Ring of Brodgar today I took a photo of each stone from outside the ditch. I have a theory that the Stones of Brodgar were set in their places with a sloping edge facing in the same relative direction in rotation around the circle. They obviously don't all have an obvious slope on one side. Also at least one of the stones fell over in historic or prehistoric times, and may have been re-erected by Historic Scotland staff. Could they have put them up wrongly? I don't know if my theory works. What do you think? Jeffery Nicholls 
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Orkney Riddle Index

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  Orkney Riddle  Index This is the southern tip of South Ronaldsay,  close to the Tomb of the Eagles.  The island offshore is called the Pentland Skerries. It is attached to a shoal of underwater shallow seabed, called the Sandy Riddle. Hence, the Orkney Riddle.  Here is the index to the blogs that make up the Orkney Riddle, research that touches the surface to suggest what really happened in the land of the Simmerdim.   A Bizarre Idea  Neolithic people walking to Orkney! That's the bizarre idea.  The Orkney Vole  It's a bit of a mystery how the vole delivered itself from Belgium to Orkney without passing through England and Scotland.    They Must Have Had Boats  That's what I have been told. Sorry, I don't believe it. Neolithic Migration to Orkney   This is a very brief summary of what may have happened in Orkney between 3500BC, and 2500BC. Pentland Firth  Crossing the Pentland Firth is exciting on a modern boat. It ...
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Doggerland

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Doggerland   Looking for evidence in the southern North Sea that might suggest that habitable land once linked Norfolk to Holland?  Shallow seas in the southern North Sea,  Doggerland and between Norfolk,  Lincolnshire and Holland.  Summary:- Two research documents are re-framed here to provide a proof that a land corridor once joined Norfolk to Holland allowing the migration of woodlands, vegetation, insects, reptiles, mammals,  and people between Europe and Britain,  until the Neolithic period of human prehistory.  The analysis of deposits sampled in the "Europe's Lost Frontiers" project records two major erosional events.  The first of these occurs as sea levels rise to drown wetland peats at around 9000BP,  or later. Peats growing in the region were drowned as sea levels rose. Peats growing at higher levels were not found ,and are therefore likely to have been removed from these locations by a later erosional event.  The second ...
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Quaternary Addendum

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   The Orkney Riddle  Quaternary Addendum  " Archaeology in the North Sea " is intended to demonstrate that a spine of land connected Dogger Bank to a location in the northern North Sea that was accessible to Mesolithic people 10,000 years ago when sea-level was 50m below present. " Walkable Land in the North Sea " defines an area of land that would have been available for hunting, foraging, and transit for Neolithic people.  Here, I relate the geology of the North Sea to demonstrate that in a period between 60,000BP and 30,000BP,  a time in which an ice age is thought to have weighed heavily upon Britain,  in fact , although it was a bit chilly there were significant numbers of animals,  plants and people roaming the territory. The sequence of events that created the undersea landscape of the North Sea is roughly as follows :- Initially, in the last interglacial, 140,000 BP to 120,000BP, the North Sea may have been a reasonably quiet marine lagoo...
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