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Here's another UNESCO world heritage site we'd love to show you is Skara Brae. Skara Brae is located just North-East of Scotland, in the Orkney Isles. In 1850, a terrible storm raged in the on the isles. And when it calmed and passed, the clouds recending, the light revealed the outline of an ancient village.
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Just a couple of old houses, that was all, and after a few years of excitement but no treasures, the locals stopped digging around and left it. Until 1913 that is, when grave diggers and robbers came in and in a single weekend excavated most of the site, taking away an unkown number of items. 9 years later, as another storm almost took the village down with it, the decision came to fortify it against the winds. The first complete excavation was made in 1927. |
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The houses came with cupboards, dressers, stone boxes and even, shockingly, a primitive drainage system that went through the village and included a crude toilet in each house.
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Tools used were stone. They built their houses by pushing big stone slabs into the ground as walls. No roofs were found, and researchers guess they lived without them. Seeing as almost all of their tools were made of stone, it's not that surprising, and apparently keeping off the winds was enough for them. Researchers claim that Skara Brae was inhabited for about 6000 years before it was abandonded. |
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However, despite the simplicity of their tools, their homes make a lot of sense. They usually followed as follows: One large room with a fireplace, and two stone beds on either side. Was it the man who slept on the big bed and the woman on the small one? Did the female sleep with the children on the big bed while the man slept on the small bed? Researchers are still trying to figure that one out.
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So how old is it? It was inhabited, researchers claim, at about 3200-2500 BC. In other words, it has been without residents 4000-5000 years, belonging to an ancient neolithic past, a race of man no more caveman, but very early in human culture. Yet, they were already farming, as the ruins have shown. |
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All in all 8 houses were discvered, assuming an 8 family residences. No one knows why they left or if they died there, and that one will always be a mystery.
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In 1999 Skara Brae were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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Submitted by: Marcus A.
