Orkney Riddler

  Cairns and the people in them BACK to Neolithic Migrants to Orkney In “Beside the Ocean of Time: a chronology of Neolithic Burial Monuments and Houses in Orkney”, Seren Griffiths lists the carbon dates of human bones from 10 Orkney cairns. The cumulative data for these skeletal remains demonstrates that about 75% of the people lain in the cairns died roughly before 3000BC, the rest of them died later, mostly through the 3rd millennium BC. Similar findings are suggested by dating of skeletons in Scotland and England, and it is likely that the fall in numbers of bodies in cairns is, as much as anything, because after a couple of hundred years of existence the cairns were in poor condition, and often collapsing, making them sometimes risky places to enter. Audrey Henshall, in “Neolithic cairns of Orkney” finds that there are around 80 cairns in Orkney, of which half are stalled cairns, linear structures with an oblong space within a great mound. The name refers to upright stones tha...

The Anglo-Dutch Neolithic Corridor   Question;   "The Anglo-Dutch Neolithic Corridor"; that's a cool title! What's it about? Answer ; Well, I've been trying to prove that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney,  but it's easier to demonstrate that they walked from Holland to Norfolk, and i f I can do that, the idea that people must have had boats to get from Caithness to Orkney becomes less credible.  Question ;  At the moment it is believed that Neolithic people came to Britain in boats. So, what is the current understanding of Neolithic movement of people around Britain's shores? Answer ;    In "Sheridan, A. 2010. The Neolithization of Britain andIreland: The ‘Big Picture’. In B. Finlayson & G. Warren(eds), Landscapes in Transition, the authors suggest the routes of several sea lanes from coastal France to the coasts of Britain at this period, based on pottery typologies etc. Question ;  When did Neolithic people arrive in Britain?...