A Bizarre Idea

 

The Bizarre Idea

This is a view of the Pentland Firth from a settlement called Skarfskerry, on the North Coast of Caithness in Scotland.

The low headland across the water is a neighbouring piece of Scottish coast and beyond that, at the horizon left of view, and almost invisible, is Orkney, an archipelago that sits beyond the northernmost coast of the Scotland.

It is part of the Northern Isles group, and consists of more than 70, mostly low-lying, islands and islets of which only about 20 are inhabited.

Orkney is renowned as the home of a Unesco World Heritage site. The islands were occupied over 5000 years ago by Neolithic people who created a group of settlements and monuments of a complexity and quality not surviving anywhere else in Britain at such an early date.

The Pentland Firth here that separates Scotland from Orkney is a strait of water about 8 miles wide, and is famously dangerous.

The average speed of water running through the Firth can reach 4 nautical miles per hour, and also a peak speed, in places, of 12 nautical miles per hour.

Watching the waters of the Firth from the safety of a capable boat is disconcerting as there are treacherous whirlpools and glassy surfaces where it is hard to imagine what turbulence might be happening beneath the vessel.

Even today with modern craft, the unpredictable nature of the seaway can cause real problems for seafarers.

Skarfskerry, the village where the above photograph is taken from, is a straggling group of dwellings dotted along the North coast of Caithness.

Caithness, the northern most county in Mainland Scotland, is otherwise a bare, some would say barren, landscape.

Here there are very few people, towns are small, and “Civilisation” is miles away.

In prehistory there is little evidence of any greater density of Neolithic population in Caithness than elsewhere in Britain, yet people are thought to have looked across to Orkney in the early years of the spread of farming practices, and decided to make boats and cross the Pentland Firth to establish communities there.

When these people arrived in Orkney they built settlements where they are thought to have farmed domestic animals, including pigs, cattle, and sheep.

Some of these animals are thought to have been domesticated locally, but others, like sheep would have been brought in to Britain by migrants from Europe.

Neither is Orkney the only offshore island that has hosted Neolithic populations around the British coast.

Known sites of occupation are found in Shetland, the Outer Hebrides, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Scilly Isles.

These, and Britain itself, are all places that are presently understood to have been accessed, between themselves and from Europe, by waterborne vessels in early prehistoric times.

The date at which this journeying is calculated to have happened is around 4000BC, a period known as the Early Neolithic, in Britain.

In the absence of actual evidence it is difficult to see how the import of domestic animals across a substantial waterway, like the Pentland Firth or the English Channel, was accomplished, and practicalities are often not discussed.

One of the earliest boats found in Britain is a Neolithic log boat which can be seen sitting in the sand of Grey Abbey Bay in Strangford Lough, Ireland. It is made of oak heartwood, measures 9.1m long by at most 0.89m wide, and would probably carry up to 5 people. A sample of the wood was radiocarbon dated to after 3499BC. (Nationaltrust.org.uk)

Such vessels were clearly being developed in Neolithic times, at least for enclosed areas of water, or for riding, and crossing rivers.

The possibility that a boat like this could cross a piece of water as violent as the Pentland Firth seems unlikely, and the shipping of livestock in it is even more doubtful.

Even now, Orkney is on the edge. It takes a degree of raw determination (and heating) to survive here. High winds and horizontal rain are normal weather conditions for an Orkney winter.

In spite of this, people are thought to have come here, with livestock, on boats, and settled.

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I could never quite believe that Neolithic people came to Orkney by boat.

As it is thought that they brought cattle and sheep with them, I could not envisage any animal, or any human, surviving a sea crossing of any British tidal waters in any prehistoric vessel.

Standard sources tie themselves in knots to persuade us that Neolithic people had boats that could carry beasts of both sexes that, once landed, would reproduce and help their tribe to survive on the unknown territory across the dangerous waters.

However, evidence has recently emerged that added another dimension to the problem. It was discovered that the Orkney Vole, a species that is unique to the archipelago, had been found by DNA analysis, to originate from northern Europe, and that it was not directly related to the common vole in Britain.

“Much debate surrounds the origins of the Orkney Vole Microtus arvalis orcadensis (Yalden 1999; Corbet 1961). It is the only vole on Orkney and is found on eight islands, while in mainland Britain the field vole (M. Agrestis) is the only Microtus species.

M. Arvalis and M. Agrestis occur widely across continental Europe with overlapping distributions (Mitchell-Jones et al 2003). It is therefore clear that M. Arvalis did not colonise Orkney naturally (Haynes et al 2003; Haynes et al 2004), and although modern consensus supports a human introduction during the Neolithic (Hedges et al 1987), their geographic origin and mechanisms of introduction still remain uncertain. “ (Thomas Cucchi et al)

This meant that the animal that arrived in Orkney did not pass through England, Wales or Scotland.

I tried to imagine a boat leaving Ostend with a Vole somehow stowed away on board, with a prehistoric crew paddling, or sailing, to Kent and stopping there overnight at Dover. They would struggle to travel at night, I thought, and would need to rest, and sleep, as well as hunt for food, and find water. If they had a vole on board they would also have to feed it, and restrain it from escape. They would then set off again up the east coast of England stopping off at Lowestoft to sleep the night in a hastily erected tent, and then take off again at first light in the morning.

I was exhausted just thinking about it.

A vole arriving in Orkney, from Europe, without passing through Britain was a clue that all was not as it seems, and that in spite of the insistence of some that voles may have been carried as pets or food items, another possibility was probably more likely.

I therefore rather assumed that it must be necessary to question what places were passable around the coasts of Neolithic Britain, which areas were land, and which places were water, and when did land areas stop being land.

It is understood that much of the southern North Sea area was land at some point in the past. A piece of shallow sea called Dogger Bank has been named Doggerland as artefacts of 8000 years of age, and older, are frequently dredged up there. The rise in sea level which has occurred since the last ice age has clearly flooded lands here, but which lands, where, and when?

The obvious location, or so I thought, for a route to Orkney from Europe , that would be passable for people, cattle, sheep, and small rodents, on foot, and avoiding England and Scotland, would be somewhere in the middle of the North Sea which, of course, is a bizarre idea.

Indeed, it was such a bizarre idea that I followed it, to see where it took me.

Surely it shouldn’t be too difficult to prove that there was a piece of land, not attached to Britain that joined Dogger Bank to Orkney, in spite of the fact that the area now has seabed at over a 100 metres deep.

It would only take an understanding of the geology of Britain and the North Sea, knowledge of successive glaciations, study of the habits of ice, channel erosion, various dating techniques, and a close inspection of the archaeology of Orkney.

Not so much really, I’m surprised it took so long!

When I started to envisage this idea, that was all it was, an idea. I had nothing but the notion that somehow Doggerland, down in the southern part of the North Sea had once extended northwards to Shetland and Orkney without touching Britain.

I read everything I could find to understand who was where, and when, in prehistoric Britain, and the weight of opinion had it that waves of people came in boats and traded, or brought goods from western France to the western coasts of Neolithic Great Britain. These people bought domesticated animals and the skills to make pottery with them in boats, and every time I suggested in any context that a cow, or a sheep in a boat was not a realistic possibility for Neolithic people I was thoroughly shouted down.

Nobody has found a Neolithic boat that would have crossed the English Channel or the Pentland Firth, but for some people, the existence of such a vessel is an article of faith.

To understand how land was passable, at least by rodents, in the middle of the North Sea, a magical mystery tour had to be taken, beginning in the last ice age.

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Index

The rich history of archaeology on Orkney provides source material for the following observations.

"Neolithic Migrants to Orkney" The story of the First, Founding Immigrants to Orkney 

"A Bizarre Idea" What's the Story, then?

"Walkable land in the North Sea" describes evidence that walkable land was present between Norfolk and Holland at a time when prehistoric people were occupying northern Europe. 

"Archaeology in the North Sea" looks at the elusive evidence that people could have walked from Caithness to South Ronaldsay. 

"3000BC" gives detailed evidence of tsunami events on the Norwegian Coast.

 "A Brief Guide to the Last Glaciation" How did the North Sea develop?

"Mainland Settlements" discusses and dates the early settlements across mainland Orkney.

"Barnhouse" describes this "Neolithic Village" a substantial group of Neolithic structures on the shore of Harray Loch. 

"Barnhouse Sweat Lodge" describes Structure 8, the Sweat Lodge at Barnhouse.

"Modern Sweat Lodge Practices" describes present day Sweat Lodge ceremonies.

"The Stones of Stenness" describes anomalies in the settings of the stones that formed the stone circle.

"The Ring of Brodgar" discusses just how many stones are there, or are not there, at the Ring of Brodgar. 

 "A Custom Among the Lower Class of People" , about 18th century Orkney people and the Stones at Brodgar. 

"Maeshowe, a Wonder of the Neolithic World" is the personal account of the excavation of the Maeshowe Cairn by the man who excavated it. I include it because it is so personal, not because it adds anything to our understanding. 

"Cairns of Orkney" is the commentary of several antiquarian archaeologists writing in previous centuries as they excavated Cairns in England, Scotland, and Orkney. Although these cairns may not have been excavated to a high standard, the commentary provided in these reports is, in my view, very personal, and highly approachable. 

"Cairns and the People in them" examines the bones of the people who were laid in cairns, and tells their stories.

"The Westrays" describes the Knap of Howar settlement, and the desolation of the islands that were found by the people of the Links of Noltland when they settled there at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. 

"Skara Brae, RCAHMS" is the official description of the Neolithic "Village"

"Skara Brae, Excavation", is an account of the excavation of Hut 7 in 1927. This is an interesting personal account of the Gordon Childe's Excavation by J Wilson Paterson.

"Dating Skara Brae" gives detailed dating evidence for Skara Brae 

"The Ness of Brodgar Excavation" and account of the excavation , before 2020, by Nick Card. 

"Dating the Ness of Brodgar" gives Dating evidence for the Ness of Brodgar 

"The Ferriby Boats" The first seafaring vessels? 

"The Orkney Vole" discusses the evidence that the Orkney Vole migrated from Europe to Orkney without setting foot on mainland Britain. 

Bere Barley, a Neolithic grain derivations of Bere Barley. 

"Concluding" , some simple remarks in conclusion.

"Finally" closing remarks.

Sources 

All views and opinions expressed are my own, but it remains a work-in-progress for which positive criticism and comment is welcomed.

Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk