Solving the Riddle

 Solving the Riddle 


The Riddle of neolithic Orkney 


The Orkney 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 the geology of Britain i had to knock a lot of very worthy theories on the head, and replace them with some things that are more realistic, and grounded in what I saw as “logic”.

This led me to write a long and rambling series of blogs called the “Orkney Riddle”. Riddle, because a significant sandbank between Orkney and Scotland that may have been the last vestige of land between the two places is called the Sandy Riddle. 

Orkney Riddle is long, detailed and possibly yawn inducing, so I have to take an additional approach, with the hope that people will help me by discussing issues with me, correcting me where I am wrong, and guiding me with their own inspiration. 

It didn't take me long to cook up a theory with some bits of evidence which could be used to justify my belief that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney and back, becoming stranded on the archipelago when land joining the two places was removed by rising sea levels. 

When I popped this notion on line, just to gauge reaction i was roundly dismissed. Some said “they had boats” others said “they must have had boats”, and one highly placed scholar demonstrated that some prehistoric people had crossed water to camp on an island off the Norwegian Coast. 

Yes, there were boats, big boats in the Mediterranean Sea 5000 years ago, but the Mediterranean is land locked, and only very slightly tidal. 

I was up against a lot of inertia!

A bit later on in my investigation I thought i had enough quite strong evidence to suggest that people were walking between Scotland and Orkney in neolithic Britain. 

I took myself to see if I could talk about this to proper archaeologist, but when I found one, that person would not even discuss my findings, declaring from the outset that Neolithic people had boats, which I couldn't deny, because its true.

My argument was and is, that the boats that they had would not make a crossing of the Pentland Firth. Rowing across it now would be suicidal, same then!

Said archaeologist obviously viewed me as a crank, which I found a little hurtful, especially as i was offering a smorgasbord of evidence for my theory, and this person offered nothing to support his emphatic refusal to even discuss the topic.

The result of this and all of my setbacks was, and is, to redouble my research and plaster on more layers of evidence. 

To the extent that I am now considering the tectonics of the European Continental Shelf of the Atlantic Ocean…..

How i got there is a long story.

-×-

The story became complicated by scientific research that found that a vole that is unique on Orkney was not related to the Common Vole of Britain.  This, to me and the original researchers at the time of me reading the original research meant that the Orkney vole was somehow transported from Belgium to orkney without landing on British soil.

This feat was thought to have been accomplished by boats travelling between the two places, or by animals being castaway on natural floating pontoons.

For me though this looked as if the vole had found a way to transit between mainland Europe and Orkney by walking along land that had remained at a high enough level with reference to ancient sea levels. I decided that this land ran up the centre of the the North Sea from Dogger Bank and across to orkney in the northern North Sea,  without touching Britain. 

I set off looking for this land, and found it, only at the latest stage of the research that the premise of the original evidence was wrong.

Bones of the same vole have been found in a cave in England. 

In spite of that revelation though i had still found a terrain that would have supported people and animals throughout much of the last ice age.

-×-

-Continuing-



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