Chapter XX: Section IV: The Stone Age

In this section and the following one, an attempt will be made to indicate the state of the inhabitants in the earliest times. Although the relics, implements and structures, which they have left, may not always be available for eliciting clear information, still these remains when well sifted yield valuable results. In such an expository narrative, touching prehistoric matters, dates can rarely be assigned; but the natural sequence of development may be followed, and several stages of early civilisation explained.

Beginning with the group of things which may safely be assumed to have been an indispensable requisite in the circumstances of the daily life of the people, namely, their weapons, tools, and implements. The greater number of our stone implements and weapons have been casually found in the ground, in draining, ploughing, making roads, in peat mosses, the beds of rivers, on the margins of lochs, and on the sandy wastes near the sea shore. It must be observed that all these stone tools and weapons are not strictly assignable to the stone age, for such stone objects are sometimes found in bronze age graves, and in association with many other circumstances, which clearly indicate a survival of some kinds of stone objects and implements into a much later period. Moreover, various kinds of stone implements seem to have continued in use long after the introduction of bronze.¹ So far as investigation has been made, there appears to be almost universal evidence of a stone age over the globe at one time or another, which shows that the early culture of the human race has proceeded on wonderfully similar lines in the most distant regions of the earth. On the other hand, there is often no satisfactory evidence of the same wide and distinct character of a passing from the stone age and through the bronze age. But the causes of this are easily understood, and will become clear as we proceed.

¹ “Sir William Wilde informs us that in Ireland stone hammers,
and not unfrequently stone anvils, have been employed by
country smiths and tinkers in some of the remote country
districts until a comparative recent period. The same use
of stone hammers and anvils for forging prevails among the
Kaffirs of the present day. In Iceland, also, perforated
stone hammers are still in use for pounding dried fish,
driving in stakes, for forging and other purposes.” Evans’
_Ancient Stone Implements_, page 11, 1872. For other
instances of the use of stone for various purposes in the
Shetland and Orkney Islands, see _Past and Present_, by Dr.
A. Mitchell, pages 121‒129.

The stone weapons, tools, and objects, which have been found in Scotland, may be separated into several groups, according to the purposes for which they were used: such as axes, spear and arrow heads, knives, saws, borers, and scrapers.

Axes, including hammers, are of two kinds, those with a hole for a shaft and those without a hole, and the first class is not so numerous as the other. The axes with a hole for a shaft present a greater variety of form, and are often ornamented, while the others are plain. They are rarely made of flint, but often of granite, schist, basalt, greenstone, and other kinds of stones. They vary much in size, and are distinguishable into three varieties, thus: 1, those with an edge at both ends; 2, with an edge at one end only; 3, with both ends blunt or rounded. Those with an edge at both ends are the rarest of the three forms. A fine specimen of this class in greenstone was found in a bronze age grave, in a stone circle, at Crichie, Aberdeenshire. Other examples have been found in Orkney, and in the Island of Coll, in an unfinished condition. It has been supposed that these stones were used as battle axes.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 306‒307, _et seq._

The second class, with the edge at one end only, is more common. A fine specimen was found associated with a cremated interment in an urn, which was turned up by the plough near Ardrossan, in Ayrshire. It is formed of granite, with an ornamental band of three incised lines round the concave edges pierced by the shaft hole, and the shorter end finished like a hammer with a rounded face. They have been found in every quarter of the country, and often in an unfinished state. The hole for the handle was usually pierced from both sides, so the boring has not always met exactly. They vary much in size and form, and in degrees of finish and polish. The third class, hammer-shaped at both ends, has been called a war hammer. A very fine specimen of it was found in the parish of Urquhart, Elginshire, formed of a whitish flint, and finely polished.¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 309‒319, 320, 321; Wilson’s _Prehistoric
Annals of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 102‒194; _Proceedings
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, Volume IV.,
pages 55, 379; Volume V., pages 214, 240; Volume VI., pages
42, 86, 310, 332; Volume VII., pages 101, 102, 499; Volume
VIII., pages 264, 232; Volume IX., pages 55, 384; Volume X.,
page 460; Volume XXIII., pages 205, 210.

The class of stone axes without a hole for the shaft are very numerous. They vary greatly in size and shape, from 3 inches in length to 15; some of them are of flint, others of different kinds of stone, and many of them are smoothed and polished over the surface. The smaller ones seem to have been tools, which were used for various purposes, but a number of the larger ones, which are more carefully polished and finished, have been considered weapons.

Arrow-heads show two distinct forms――the leaf-shaped and the triangular, and it seems probable that the leaf-shaped class may have been the earliest form. But both forms, with barbs and a central stem, were found in a chambered cairn at Unstan, in Orkney. They are all usually made of flint, and none of them are large; some of them have barbs but no stem, others have barbs and stems both. Many of them are beautifully shaped, and some specimens are finely serrated along the edges. Arrow-heads have occasionally been found still in the shaft; an example of a leaf-shaped one was found in 1875 in a moss at Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, with the shaft entire to the length of nine inches. The arrow-heads and spear-heads differ from each other only in size.¹ A very large collection of both arrow and spear heads may be seen in the National Museum at Edinburgh, in provincial museums, and private collections.²

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 354‒365.

² There are upwards of thirty provincial museums in Scotland,
which have collections of Scotch antiquities both in stone
and bronze, more or less extensive and valuable. Reports on
these collections may be seen in the twenty-second volume of
the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_.

There is a series of tools and implements, mostly of flint, which seem to have been used for various purposes in connection with the daily life of the people. These are knives, saws, scrapers, borers, and flaking tools, and we may endeavour to form some idea of the process of their manufacture. The ground-work of all these tools is a flake of flint, struck from a prepared core in such a way that it presents a more or less cross-section. These flakes may be of any length up to six inches, but in Scotland, where it is difficult to find large blocks of flint, the flakes are commonly short. Flakes just as when struck off the core of flint have sometimes been found along with the core itself. Such flakes may be used for many purposes, and many of them show evidence of having been so used without any preparation of the edge. The natural edge, however, soon becomes blunt and broken, so when a cutting tool of this kind was intended for constant use, it was worked along its edges and trimmed to a point resembling a shoemaker’s knife, or of a somewhat oval form. Many flint knives, trimmed for cutting or scraping, have been found throughout the country, some of which are single-edged and others double-edged. But knives, formed of various kinds of stone, have frequently been found, of slatestone, greenstone, schist, and other stones, flat, well-made, and highly finished.¹

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume III., pages 252, 439; Volume VII., pages 121‒136,
212‒219; Volume VIII., pages 64, 66; Volume XI., pages
172‒174; Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 365‒371.

Dr. Evans, perhaps the highest authority on stone tools
and implements in Britain, has the following on flint
flakes:――“The inner or flat face of a flake is that produced
by the blow which dislodged it from the parent block, core,
or nucleus. The outer, ridged, or convex face comprises the
other facets. The base, or butt-end of a flake, is that at
which the blows to form it were administered, the other end
is the point. Flakes may be subdivided into――1. External, or
those which have been struck off by a single blow from the
edge of a nodule of flint. Many of these are as symmetrical
as those resulting from a more complicated process of
manufacture. 2. Ridged flakes, or those presenting a
triangular section. One face of these sometimes presents the
external crust of the flint; in others the ridge has been
formed by transverse chipping, as was the case with the long
flaxes of Pressigny, but this method appears to have been
almost unknown in Britain. 3. Flat, where the external face
is nearly parallel to the internal, and the two edges are
formed by narrow facets. These several varieties may be long
or short, broad or narrow, straight or curved, thick or thin,
pointed or obtuse.” _Ancient Stone Implements_, pages 248‒49.

A flint saw is simply a flake trimmed to a jagged edge, instead of being sharpened by chipping or grinding. They are mostly of very small size, and in some specimens the teeth are formed with remarkable regularity and fineness. Though not so common as flint-knives, they are not rare, and there are upwards of sixty specimens in the National Museum.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, page 372.

Flint tools, seemingly intended for awls or borers, are not very common in Scotland. Two kinds have been found――a long-pointed tool, which may have been used for piercing holes in skins or other soft material, and a shorter-pointed tool which may have been used for drilling holes in harder material. Another class have been called flaking tools; they are long and chisel-shaped, and usually appear blunted, worn, and rounded at the ends, as if from attrition against a hard substance. They are supposed to have been used for trimming and chipping other flint and stone tools. The tool called a flint-scraper is a round-nosed flake, with a semicircular end chipped to a bevelled edge, and usually flat on the under side, with the upper side trimmed to a ridged form. There are several varieties of this tool, and they seem to have been used for various purposes. Some of them are double-edged, others circular; and they also vary much in size. There seems to be no doubt that the larger ones were used for scraping hides and preparing leather. It also seems highly probable that the smaller class of these tools were used for a distinctly different purpose――that of producing fire with a nodule of pyrites of iron――in the same way as the flint and steel in our own times to strike a light. For the purpose of producing sparks, pyrites is as effective as iron, and they were so used among the Romans until a comparative late period. Pyrites of iron abound in the chalk-beds of England, but when they are exposed upon the surface of the ground decomposition in no very long time removes all appearance of them.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 373‒376; Evans’
_Ancient Stone Implements_, etc., pages 269‒287, 367, _et
seq._

Flint is nowhere very abundant in Scotland, but there are some localities which afford transported nodules in greater abundance than others, and in these there is always evidence of a long-continued and widespread industry in the manufacture of tools and weapons from the raw material. A site of such a manufacture was discovered at the confluence of the Leochel and the Don in Aberdeenshire, though flint is not native in the neighbourhood.¹ There is evidence of many such sites of flint manufactures, which, when closely examined, the mass of splinters “usually reveals the fact that among them are many flakes, cores, and unfinished implements, and not unfrequently hammer and anvil-stones, and even perfectly finished knives, saws, arrow-heads, or axes, may be occasionally found, although the rule is that only the waste products of the manufacture are met with. From these and from experimental knowledge of the qualities of the material the processes of the fabrication may to some extent be inferred. The tools were apparently, for the most part, naturally formed pebbles of quartz of a shape and size convenient for the purposes for which they were used. The larger pebbles, often of the shape and size of a cobbler’s lapstone, seem to have been used as anvil-stones, while the smaller pebbles, of such size and shape as could be conveniently grasped in the hand, have been used as hammer-stones.”

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume IV., page 385.

“When the inferences deduced from an examination and comparison of the chips, flakes, and cores, which compose the refuse of these ancient flint workshops, are compared with the results of the methods still employed, whether of savage arrow-makers or civilised manufacturers of gun-flints and strike-a-lights, the ancient methods of workmanship are found to coincide with the natural properties of the material and the modern processes so far as they go. But the ancient flint-workers went further than modern knowledge and modern skill can follow them. There are some of their processes which have not been discovered by modern science, and some of their products which cannot be imitated by modern skill, with all its ingenuity of contrivance and all its resources of means and appliances.”¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 374‒5; Evans’
_Ancient Stone Implements_, etc., pages 13‒48.

In this very brief account of the weapons, implements, and tools, of our early ancestors of the stone age, we can discern clear evidence of the knowledge, the ingenuity, and the skill which they possessed and exercised in the practical uses which they made of the means within their reach. These products of their industry, associated with their daily life, shows one side of a striking form of culture, considering the surrounding conditions and circumstances. There is another side of this culture, in some respects even more remarkable, and to it I will now turn.

Amongst all the prehistoric remains of Scotland there is scarcely anything that surpasses the Chambered Cairns of the Stone Age in significance and interest. Their great antiquity, their peculiarity of type, and their structural characteristics, associated with the phenomena of their internal deposits, offer a subject for examination of prime historic value. There is little doubt that the Long Barrows of England, and the Chambered Cairns of Caithness, Argyle, and Orkney, are the monuments of one and the same people; and that in the latter, so far as we can discover, we reach the representative of primeval man in Scotland.

Both the long and the short horned cairns of Caithness differ widely from those of the Bronze Age, and from those of all later periods. Their structural type is distinguished by two characteristics, namely: 1, by having an internal chamber accessible by a passage; 2, by having a regular external outline on the ground-plan, structurally defined by a double or single retaining wall. During the last thirty years a considerable number of them have been excavated and carefully explored; and I cannot do better than reproduce briefly a description of a few typical examples, and then present some details of their internal contents.

The external dimensions of some of the horned cairns are very great. On the crest of a hill overlooking the south end of the loch of Yarhouse, in Caithness, there are two cairns of great magnitude not far from each other. They lie across the hill from east to west, and have at both their ends curved horn-like projections, falling gradually to the level of the ground. The length of the longest one was two hundred and forty feet, the breadth at its eastern end was sixty-six feet, and at its western end thirty-six feet; but the curved horns expanded so that the line across their tips at the eastern end was ninety-two feet, and at the western end fifty-three feet. The height of the cairn at the east end was twelve feet, sloping gradually to below five feet at the west end. When the loose stones were removed from the upper part of the highest end, a chamber with a passage leading into it was disclosed. The outer opening of the passage was in the middle between the projecting horns; and two flat stones placed on end, 2½ feet high, formed the door jambs on the outside of the entrance. A well built passage two feet wide runs inward for ten feet, and where it opens into the chamber, two stones similar to those at the outside entrance, but higher, are set on end, and form a doorway of eighteen inches wide. The chamber itself is small compared with the external magnitude of the cairn; and it only measured twelve feet in length from front to back, and six feet from side to side. The side walls were entire to a height of seven feet, and at this height they began to converge to form a rudely vaulted roof, like the roofs of other erections of dry-built stone. The chamber is divided into three parts by two pairs of divisional stones projecting from the side walls opposite to each other; these stones are undressed flags sunk on end into the floor, and leaving about two feet between their edges. When the explorers had cleared the three compartments of the chamber and ascertained its construction, seeing that the chamber did not occupy more than a twentieth part of the length of the cairn, they thought that other chambers would be found within it. The centre was then tried, and trials were made all round the cairn, but no other chamber was found in it. The floor of the chamber itself was formed of a dark clay five inches thick, intermixed with ashes and calcined bones, in a state of extreme comminution; this layer was easily detached from the natural subsoil below, and was raised in large cake like masses, each of which was carried outside to be crumbled and searched. No single fragment of bone was discovered exceeding an inch in length; and the few bits which afforded any clear indications, such as portions of teeth and jawbones, were unmistakably human. A number of small flint chips, and two fragments of pottery, were the only manufactured articles found.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 230‒236.

The other cairn closely resembled the first one, and stood about three hundred yards from it. But on the floor of the first compartment of its chamber a cist was placed to the left of the entrance. The cist was formed of slabs; and it was four feet four inches long, twenty inches wide, and nine inches deep to the level of the floor; and in the dark earthy clay inside of it, there was a whitish layer of softened bones in a condition of extreme decay. In the east end of the cist, fragments of an urn were found, and a necklace of small beads of lignite. The floor of the chamber consisted of a layer of clay and ashes over six inches thick, intermixed with burnt human bones, and animal bones; and in the corners of the chamber there were numbers of human teeth, of which the osseous parts had perished, and the enamel of the crowns only remained. About three miles from this cairn, another of the same character lies on the ridge of a height in the Moor of Camster. Its contents presented phenomena similar to the preceding ones. In the loose layer on the surface of the floor of the chamber, a few fragments of skulls and other unburnt bones of the human skeleton were found, mingled with the splintered bones of the horse, ox, deer, and swine. No fragments of pottery, flint-chips, or tools of any kind were found in it.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 237‒243.

In a short cairn of the horned class which lies on a small height at Ormiegill, near Ulbster, there were found in its chamber a polished hammer of gray granite, an oval flint knife, and an arrow head, several flint flakes serrated on one side, and a number of well made scrapers. Another of the same class, locally called the Cairn of Get, lies in a hollow among the hills at Garrywhin, near Bruan. Its extreme length is eighty feet, and its greatest breadth sixty feet; the horns project about twenty feet in front, and about fifteen feet behind. On the surface of the floor of the first compartment of the chamber there were four unburnt human skeletons, and the skulls lying close to the wall on the right of the entrance. The skulls appeared to Dr. Anderson “to be fully as well formed as many of the heads to be seen on living men of the present day.” In the compacted mass of the floor of the chamber, there were an enormous quantity of human and animal bones, mostly more or less burnt; and with these were intermixed many chips and flakes of flint and fragments of pottery.¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 244‒249.

There are many chambered cairns in Caithness without the external peculiarity of horns, oval shaped or roundish ones, some of which have been excavated, and the internal characteristics of their structure are similar to that of the preceding ones. On the crests of the hills of Yarhouse, there were four chambered cairns which the late Mr. A. H. Rhind explored. On the surface of the floors of the chambers he found unburnt bones and pottery, and in the layers burnt bones and pottery, but no flints or tools of any description. Dr. Anderson excavated another cairn on the hill above Bruan, the characteristics of which he considered as forming a connecting link between the Caithness and the Orkney forms of chambered cairns. This cairn was forty feet in diameter and fourteen feet in height, and the passage was ten feet long and two feet nine inches wide at the entrance, where it was three feet high, increasing in width and height inwards to the chamber. The interior differed from that of the preceding ones, inasmuch as it consisted of a principal chamber of two compartments, and also presented the peculiarity of a small side chamber opening off the principal one. The divisional slabs did not rise to the roof, which formed one vault over both the compartments of the chamber. The walls sloped outwards from the base to near the middle of their height, and were then brought inward above the middle by the overlapping of the stones to form a dome-shaped roof. The small side chamber off the principal one, measured four feet by three, and three feet six inches in height. Its floor was formed of a single flag, and on raising it, another flag was found underneath, and under both a layer of clay four inches deep, intermingled with charcoal, ashes, and burnt bones; and under this layer there was a third flag which lay upon the subsoil of the hill. The entire floor of the principal chamber and the inner part of the entrance passage was a mass twelve inches thick of broken and burnt bones mixed with ashes; the human bones were numerous, but so much broken that it was impossible to determine how many skeletons they represented. Amongst the animal bones, those of the horse, ox, red-deer, sheep or goat, and a large-sized dog, were distinguishable. A number of flint chips, a great quantity of broken pottery, amounting to several hundreds of fragments, and an oblong pebble with smoothed ends and sides, and a flat piece of bone three inches long, with a smoothed chisel-like edge, were found.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Stone and Bronze Ages_, pages 253‒260. A group
of three cairns at Rhinavie, near Skelpick, in Strathnaver,
Sutherlandshire, were examined by the late Mr. MacKay of
Skelpick at the instance of the late Dr. John Stuart; and
more recently, they have been described by the Rev. Robert
Munro, in the _Proceedings of the Society of the Antiquaries
of Scotland_, Volume XVIII., page 228, _et seq._

As mentioned in a preceding page, the long cairns have been found in many parts of England, in some of the south-western counties, also in Yorkshire, and they are numerous in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Dorsetshire. The long cairns of Caithness “agree with those of England in being, as a rule, placed approximately east and west, also in having one end, and that the east, broader and higher than the other, as well as in other particulars. They are also frequently provided with walls, which enclose and support them, and have sometimes the peculiarity of having what have been termed ‘horns.’ These are formed by the enclosing walls inclining outwards at the ends and then returning with a curve inwards, making at the point in question a figure something like the conventional representation of the human heart. This curve usually constitutes the mode of approach into the burial chamber when it is placed at the end of the mound. The same remarkable feature is found in some of the long barrows of the south-west of England. The barrow, then (a long one at Upper Swell, in Gloucestershire,) may be taken as a fairly illustrative specimen of the horned variety of Long Barrow――a variety of the tumulus of the non-metallic period which is represented in Caithness, as described by Dr. Joseph Anderson, as well as in the south-west of England, and found to contain there interments similarly arranged, and pottery and implements of similar type and rudeness to those we have found here.... This Upper Swell barrow, however, differs from the other horned cairns in Caithness, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire, in having its grave sunk below the natural surface of the ground, instead of being represented by a chamber with upright slabs for its walls, and placed on the surface and defined by the piling of stones round it.”¹ On the other hand, the English specimens of Long Barrows with horns, have the horns at one end only, usually at the widest end; while the Caithness cairns have horns at both ends, and externally this is the chief difference between them. But in the internal arrangements of the chambers there are also, as might be expected, several varying features. The character of the internal deposits in those of England and the North are remarkably similar; the bones of animals of the same species are found in both, and the tools and pottery, though not usually numerous in either of their contents, are also similar; but in the south of England the interments in them are mostly unburnt, while in the north of Scotland cremation seems to have been more common.²

¹ _British Barrows_, by Wm. Greenwell, M.A., pages 480, 481,
535‒536.

² “The similarity of this pottery, whether found in
Caithness, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire,
or Wiltshire, is a fact of less doubtful interpretation
and greater significance; especially when we couple with
it a consideration of the similarity of the weapons and
implements, of the similarity of the ground plans of the
Scottish horned cairns and of so many of the Gloucestershire,
Wiltshire, and Somersetshire long barrows, and finally
of the similarity of the skulls from the neolithic
tumuli of all these localities. These similarities are
the more surprising when we recollect how difficult
intercommunication must have been at the period when they
existed.” _British Barrows_, page 537. “The occurrence of
animal bones is another frequent incident. It is rare indeed
to meet with a barrow (where the material is such as to
favour the preservation of bone) without a considerable
number of them being scattered indiscriminately throughout
the mound.... For instance, in one at Rudstone, they were
literally in hundreds, placed with flint-chippings and
shreds of pottery, in a dark-coloured, unctuous layer,
which extended throughout the whole area of the mound,
on the natural surface of the ground.... They may be the
remains of food offered to the dead, an observance which has
extensively prevailed in many countries and in various ages.
They would in this case form part of the practice of the
worship of our ancestors, which has been a feature almost
universal in the growth of the religions of the human race,
and allied always with fear.” _Ibid._, pages 9, 10.

Having indicated at some length one characteristic type of sepulchral constructions, which prevailed in both divisions of the island, which seems to show that one ♦homogeneous race had spread over Britain at a very remote period. The other varieties of chambered cairns can be noticed only in the briefest terms. Farther north than Caithness, in the Orkney Isles, there is a remarkable group of cairns of an exceedingly interesting character; the most notable of these is the chambered mound of Maeshowe. It lies about a mile to the east of the great stone circle of Stennis, and externally it presents the appearance of a mound thirty-six feet in height, ninety-two feet in diameter, and surrounded by a trench forty feet wide, and still in some parts eight feet deep. When it was opened from the top a central chamber was discovered, which measured about fifteen feet square on the level of the floor, and thirteen feet in height to the top of the walls; but the upper part of the wall had fallen in, and its original height may have been about twenty feet. In the east, north, and south sides of the chamber there are three small openings, at a height of three feet above the floor, which gives access to cells measuring about four feet six inches wide, from seven feet to five feet six inches long, and three feet high. In the middle of the west side of the chamber, the passage leading to the outside of the mound opens; the doorway is four feet eight inches high, and three feet four inches wide, decreasing in height and width as it proceeds outward, and at the external entrance it is only two feet four inches wide. At thirty feet outward from the chamber there are checks for a door, and behind them a recess in one side of the passage, in front of which there was a slab, which might have been used as a door; and from this point inward the passage is four feet four inches high, and three feet three inches wide, continuing thus for twenty-six feet, when it becomes narrowed to two feet five inches by two slabs placed upright to form checks for the inmost door.²

♦ “homogenous” replaced with “homogeneous”

² _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume V., pages 247‒252; Wilson’s _Prehistoric Annals of
Scotland_, Volume I., page 67. I was deeply indebted to the
late Mr. Andrew Gibb, F.S.A. Scotland, of Aberdeen, for
particulars about Maeshowe, and suggestions on many other
points of our prehistoric annals.

The chamber is built of undressed slabs and blocks of the close-grained claystone of the locality, and, although the walls are built without any lime or mortar, the masonry is very neat. “Whoever built it, the chamber of Maeshowe is the most perfect and elegant known to exist in any sepulchre of its class, on this side of the Alps.”¹ Dr. Anderson remarks that the indications of its original purpose, and the evidence of its earlier history, probably lay hidden in its floor, “and have not been placed on record either by its earlier or later explorers.” From the character of the structure itself, however, he rightly classes it with the Caithness chambered cairns.²

¹ _The Brochs and the Rude Stone Monuments of the Orkney
Islands and the North of Scotland_, by J. Fergusson, D.C.L.,
page 28, 1877.

² Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, page 280. It is believed
on pretty good evidence that the chamber of Maeshowe was
broken open by the Norsemen, in the hope of finding treasure,
about the middle of the twelfth century. The walls of
the chamber are covered with Runic inscriptions slightly
scratched on the stones, comprising, it is said, nearly
one thousand letters, and there is no doubt that the
inscriptions were made after the breaking open of the mound.
See _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume V., pages 247‒252, 262‒278; and Anderson’s _Bronze
and Stone Ages_, pages 277‒279.

At Quoyness, in Elsness, in the Island of Sanday, Orkney, a large chambered cairn was explored in 1867. It lies close to the sea, only a few feet above high water mark; and its size had been reduced by the removal of stones for various purposes before it was examined. It was circular in form, with the entrance to the passage on the south-east side, and the passage was twenty-four feet long, three feet high, and twenty inches wide, covered by flat stones laid across, and slightly widening and increasing in height towards the chamber. The chamber was oblong, and measured twelve feet six inches in length, and five feet six inches wide; the walls still stood to a height of twelve feet, but the roof was gone. Opening off the chamber there were six entrances to six small oval cells, two of which were placed on each of the long sides of the central chamber, and one at each of its ends. The walls of the cells rose with an inward curve to a height of from five to six feet, and then their roofs were closed with flat stones; the largest of these cells was seven feet two inches long, and four feet eight inches wide, and the others somewhat smaller. “At the distance of twelve feet within the external wall there was a retaining wall, within the mass of the cairn surrounding the chamber, similar to that in the cairn at Ormiegill, near Ulbster, in Caithness. The structural characteristics of this cairn thus combine the peculiarities of two local groups: the double external walling defining its circular outlines, and the retaining wall surrounding the chamber, are features of the Caithness group, and the oblong rectangular chamber, with smaller cells opening from its sides, are features of the Orkney group.” In the central chamber, and in three of the smaller cells, quantities of unburnt human bones were found; and Dr. Thurnam said of them:――“There are fragments of twelve or fifteen skulls, some male and some female, some of them children or quite young persons; one or two of them have the appearance of being cleft prior to being interred, and the teeth in the lower jaws are much corroded.” Two implements of polished stone were found in one of the side cells, and a bone tool seven inches long.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 283‒287.

There are other cairns in Orkney of a similar structure. At Quanterness, near Kirkwall, on the north side of the Wideford Hill, there was one a hundred and twenty-eight feet in circumference at the base, and fourteen feet in height. On the western slope of the same hill, overlooking the Bay of Firth, there is another of a similar class, which was explored by Mr. George Petrie in 1849. In its chamber and side cells quantities of the bones of the horse, ox, sheep, and swine, were found, but no human remains were noticed. There are other sepulchral cairns in Orkney which show features more closely resembling the Caithness group. On the Holm of Papa Westray, there is a cairn which presented the threefold division of the chamber, so characteristic of the Caithness cairns; and another in the Island of Burray, which was sixty feet in length. On the floor of the chamber of the Burray cairn, the remains of a large number of unburnt human skeletons were found; and ten human skulls were lying in the first compartment of the chamber, near the opening of the entrance passage. Large quantities of the bones of the common domestic animals were identified, amongst which were the skulls of seven dogs. At Ustan, near the Bridge of Waith, Stennis, a chambered cairn which lies on a little promontory projecting into the lake, was recently excavated by Mr. R. S. Clouston. It is round, but it presented the constructive characteristics of the Caithness cairns, except a slight variation in the internal arrangement. A passage two feet wide and fourteen feet in length, led into an oblong chamber of twenty-one feet long, and six feet six inches at its widest part. The chamber was divided into five compartments, by slabs placed on edge similar to the Caithness cairns. The sepulchral deposits in this cairn were almost similar to those found in the chambered cairns of Caithness and Argyle. In the floor of the chamber and the inner part of the passage, a large quantity of unburnt human bones and animal bones were found; and numerous fragments of pottery, supposed to represent about thirty urns, and also charcoal and burnt bones were found. The implements and weapons found in the chamber, consisted of four leaf-shaped arrow-heads of large size, and well formed, and one with barbs and stem of smaller size, a finely made flint scraper, and a flint knife with the edge ground smooth, and a flint flaking tool.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 287‒298. “Taking
the Orkney group of chambered cairns as a whole, we find
it presenting the same essential characteristics as are
exhibited by the groups which have been described on the
mainland of Scotland. There is a considerable variation
in the arrangement of the chambers, and a strongly marked
tendency to a grouping of smaller cells round the main
chamber, which may be regarded as a local characteristic
peculiar to the Orkney Islands. But with this local
peculiarity there are associated instances of the tripartite
chamber so characteristic of the northern mainland area, and
in several cases the still more characteristic features of
the bounding wall and the curved extremities are presented.”
_Ibid._, page 299.

A group of cairns once existed in the plain of Clava, in ♦Strathnairn, a few miles from Inverness. There seems to have been seven or eight cairns, of these, only two now remain in a condition to show the characteristics of their structure. Complete and accurate ground plans of these have recently been published.²

♦ “Strathnain” replaced with “Strathnairn”

² By Mr. J. Fraser, C.E.; see also _Proceedings of the Society
of Antiquaries of Scotland_, Volume XVIII., page 328, _et
seq._

Perhaps it may be thought, that I should offer some explanation of the occurrence of such large quantities of animal bones found intermingled with the human remains in the series of cairn interments, which have been briefly described. This, however, can hardly, as yet, be presented in a satisfactory manner; but some customs and incidents, supposed to have been associated with the funerals of the departed in prehistoric times, may be mentioned. It has been repeatedly asserted that our early ancestors of the stone period were addicted to cannibalism; that at their tombs many human victims, mothers and infants, were sacrificed; and that at their great funeral feasts there was always a general holocaust of human and animal sacrifice. But the evidence adduced to prove the prevalence of these practices among the prehistoric inhabitants of this Island is utterly insufficient. Indeed, much of what has been advanced as evidence of such customs amongst the people of the Neolithic period in Britain, rests upon an unwarranted assumption which assumes this form:――Seeing that in such and such quarters of the globe certain existing savage tribes are addicted to cannibalism, and certain other savage tribes in some other part of the earth practice the custom of human sacrifice; these tribes are in a certain social stage, the stone age people of Britain were in a similar stage; therefore, the stone age people of Britain must have been addicted to cannibalism, and human sacrifice. Funeral feasts were, no doubt common, at which many animals were killed, but that human beings were sacrificed at these feasts in Britain, there is no reliable evidence to prove.¹

¹ Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Bateman, and Dr. Thurnam, have asserted
that human sacrifice prevailed in Britain in prehistoric
times, and the latter especially, implicitly averred that
the stone age people were cannibals, and that even the
bronze age people practised human sacrifice. In a paper
published in the third volume of the _Memoirs of the
Anthropological Society of London_, in 1870, Dr. Thurnam
maintained that the people who constructed the Long Barrows
of England were addicted to many extremely barbarous customs,
and that, “if not addicted to cannibalism, they, without
doubt, sacrificed many human victims, whose cleft skulls
and half-charred bones are found in their tombs,” page 76.
In the first edition of this volume, published in 1877, I
canvassed his evidence for the above assertions, and found
it altogether insufficient to sustain his conclusions. I
also carefully examined the evidence advanced by Sir J.
Lubbock in reference to the prevalence of these inhuman
practices among the prehistoric people of Britain, and found
it not only quite insufficient, but in many points clearly
irrelevant and inapplicable, while some of his far-fetched
analogies and inferences based thereon, were manifestly
delusive. I am, therefore, glad to find that Mr. Wm.
Greenwell, and the late Professor Rolleston, have contested
Dr. Thurnam’s conclusions. They have given more reasonable
and probable explanations of the contents and the phenomena
of the barrows. See especially pages 544‒548, of that great
and invaluable work――_British Barrows_, by Wm. Greenwell,
M.A., F.S.A., 1879. In the very able and exhaustive
remarks which Professor Rolleston made upon the series
of prehistoric Crania, discovered in the barrows which
Mr. Greenwell had so carefully explored, he completely
overthrows Dr. Thurnam’s conclusions on the points in
question. I can only give a short quotation:――“I have to say
that the bones found in the Long Barrows of England do not
seem to me to bear the interpretation which Dr. Thurnam has
put upon them.” He proceeds to show at length the grounds
and the reasons why Dr. Thurnam’s conclusions are untenable,
pages 684‒692. Rolleston then remarks, the question arises,
“how is it that in the very large number of interments
recorded in this book we have never come upon any bony
remains bearing their evidence to the existence of a
practice which is spoken of by such a very large number of
literary authorities? In answer to this, I have to say that
the literary evidence, when duly considered, proves simply
that slaves and captives were slaughtered at the funeral of
their lords, without proving that they were allowed to lie
beside them afterwards.... We have a large mass of literary
evidence in favour of the continuation of this practice into
historical times amongst the Gauls, and other foreign races
with whom the Romans and Greeks came into contact.” _Ibid._,
pages 684, 692.

In so far as the early inhabitants of Britain are concerned,
I attach very little importance to this mass of literary
evidence; when closely examined, it yields no definite or
conclusive evidence on the points in question.

As already indicated, the bones of animals found in the chambered cairns may be the remains of food offered to the dead; and thus would have formed a part of the worship of their ancestors, so that feasts might not only have been celebrated at the actual funerals, but also long afterwards at certain times in commemoration of the departed ancestors. There also may have been a form of animal worship among our ancestors of the Stone Age, which may have assumed practical expression in association with the interment of the dead. Reasoning by analogy, they may have imagined that seeing animals were exceedingly useful to the living, therefore they must be useful to the dead. On the same ground of imagined use to the dead, we may account for the occurrence of weapons, tools, and ornaments in the closest association with human remains.

Regarding the extreme comminution of the human remains in the chambered cairns of Scotland, several causes may reasonably be assigned. First, the process of cremation which seems to have been the prevailing mode of burial in these cairns, though not exclusively so, as unburnt remains also occur in them. This taken in connection with the great antiquity of the interments, the thousands of years which have elapsed since they took place, and the action of the natural agencies around them during that long period. Second, it seems obvious that in many of these cairns numerous interments have been made at longer or shorter intervals; and this might partly account for the bones being so much broken and mixed as they appear in the compacted layers of the floors in the internal chambers. But owing to the very limited dimensions of the entrance passages leading into the internal chambers of these cairns, it is hardly conceivable that interments could have often taken place after the cairns were externally and internally finished. It is possible that there may have been some interments after the completion of a cairn, as a person might have crept through the low narrow passage with an urn, and placed it on the floor of the chamber; but it is in the highest degree improbable that this mode of depositing the remains took place. Such being the real state of the matter, I offer the following view as to how the interments were originally made:――1, When a site for a cairn was fixed on, the first thing done was to mark off the ground plan of the cairn and to erect the external retaining wall; 2, Then the space where the internal chamber of the cairn was to be erected, was definitely marked off; 3, Interments might then be made in the space where the chamber was designed to be. Now it is not only conceivable, but also highly probable, that the structure may have remained in this incomplete state for an indefinite period; and thus a number of successive interments on the same spot could have been made through one or more generations, or until the head of the family or tribe resolved that the structure should be completed. The great funeral feasts would be held in and around the outline of the cairn at each successive interment; and also the feasts held in commemoration of their departed ancestors. On which occasions the actions and proceedings of the people in giving expression to their worship and rejoicing, were all performed on and around the same spot. We may imagine the scene: the slaughter and roasting of horses, oxen, sheep, and dogs; and the people moving to and fro in a state of intense excitement, when the remains of another ancestor was consigned to its last resting place. This view of successive interments before the cairn was closed up and completed, would in some measure at least account for the layers on the floors of the chambers, and the state of the human remains as we now find them.

It has been said that, “there is not a vestige of a dwelling or a defensive construction in Scotland which can be proved by evidence to be the work of the men of the Stone Age.”¹ This may be the case; and yet we may be certain that the people who erected the chambered cairns of Scotland, would have contrived to construct dwellings to protect themselves from the cold and frost, incident to a rather severe climate. Although they have left much clear evidence of their skill and industry in relation to the dead, still we cannot assume that the dead were more cared for than the living. If no trace of the dwellings in which they lived can be found, then they must have been a very peculiar people. We have seen evidence that they had horses, cattle, swine, and dogs; and that they were skilful in making tools and weapons in such materials as were available to them. Let us therefore carefully look over the many prehistoric structures of Scotland, and try to find if any of them can be assigned to the men of the Stone Age.

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, page 305; 1886.

There is only one type of structures which could on any reasonable grounds be assigned to this period, and that is the “earth houses.” The period of this class has been recently fixed as lying between “the general establishment of Christianity and the departure of the Romans from Scotland.” The grounds on which this conclusion rests are these:――1, That in two of the earth-houses some of the stones in their walls had distinctively Roman mouldings on them; and consequently they must have been built after the Roman occupation. One of these was discovered near the village of Newstead, Roxburghshire, and the other at Crichton Mains, in Mid Lothian. A Roman type of pottery and traces of Samian ware have also been found in some of the earth-houses. 2, “The presence in most of them of querns and implements of the Iron Age, and the entire absence of such implements as are characteristic of the ages of stone and bronze.”¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 300‒304.

The first point is conclusive evidence so far as it goes; but it does not follow that these two earth-houses were the first structures of this type built in Scotland. For anything that we know their construction might have been the result of special circumstances of an individual character. So far as known, the earth-houses are not numerous in that quarter of the country. Let it then be clearly understood, that merely to show the limit of the age of one or two in a certain locality, is not conclusive evidence of the origin and the possible age of a type of so peculiarly characteristic structures, spread over a wide area, unless where other evidence in harmony with the natural and known surroundings of the people is adduced. Thus the strongest point is inconclusive touching the origin and possible age of this special class of structures.

The second point is not quite accurate. For it is recorded that some of the earth houses have been found empty; that in others cinders and charred wood, the bones of the ox, deer, and other animals, shells and remains of fish, a few objects of flint, bone, and bronze, as well as querns and iron implements, have been discovered in them.¹ Although there had been nothing but querns and iron implements found in them, that would not afford conclusive evidence as to their origin and possible age, but only evidence of their latest frequenters or temporary occupiers.

¹ _Chalmers’ Caledonia_, Volume I., page 97; Wilson’s
_Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 108‒110;
_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume I., pages 260‒263; Volume III., pages 465‒471; Volume
IV., pages 64, 492‒499; Volume VI., pages 249‒250; Volume
VII., pages 276, 532‒534; Volume VIII., page 24; Volume X.
page 287.

1, Now it can hardly be questioned that the men who erected the horned and chambered cairns were capable in point of skill, power, and persistency of will, to construct the earth-houses. This much will be admitted. 2, Taking into account the climate and the circumstances under which our ancestors of the Stone Age lived and moved; and also having regard to their imperfect means of protecting themselves from the biting cold and frost, if we duly consider these things, it will at once be perceived that the earth-houses were the most suitable dwellings for their condition and circumstances. 3, Let us carefully examine the entrances and passages of the chambered cairns, the internal structure and characteristics of the chambers; and then compare these with the entrances and the galleries and chambers of the earth-houses, not fanciful but striking resemblances will be perceived between the two classes of structures. Indeed this resemblance is so marked that it is difficult to imagine that they were not both constructed by the same people. 4, So far as I know, the people of the Stone Age were a quiet race; and seeing that they found leisure to erect such great memorials to the dead, it may be reasonably assumed that they also found time to erect the earth-houses, which were in harmony with their genius and conditions of life, excepting of course the two with the Roman stones, which were no doubt the product of some eccentric and timid individual, born out of due time. 5, It is well known that the different races and tribes in Scotland, after the departure of the Romans, were so much engaged in conflicts with one another that they could scarcely have found time to construct the earth-houses, which could not have been built in a day or perhaps in a year. Besides, is there any direct evidence that the Celtic people of Scotland constructed underground galleries for any purpose after the departure of the Romans? There was but one people whose genius, condition, and circumstances, harmonised with the earth-houses, and that was the race who erected the chambered cairns.

The area of the earth-houses extends from Berwickshire to the Orkney Islands, embracing all the eastern region of Scotland; but not many of them have been discovered on the south side of the Forth. These curious structures are sometimes found singly, and sometimes in groups of from five up to forty. Many of them lie in cultivated lands, and have often been discovered by the plough striking on the stones of their roofs. I will first give a general description of their structure, and then point out the features which bear a resemblance to some of the characteristics of the chambered cairns.

Their chief features are:――1, They are under the natural level of the ground; 2, A narrow and low entrance, apt to escape notice, and a narrow passage; 3, A more or less curved chamber, gradually widening inwards and usually terminating with a rounded end; 4, The internal characteristics of the chamber, which is sometimes single, in others small chambers run off the main one, to the right and left; 5, Converging side walls which support a lintelled roof. They vary greatly in size, but their features are pretty similar.

At Airlie, in Forfarshire, there is a group of five, one of which was sixty-seven feet long, and about seven feet wide. The entrance was under two feet in height, and the floor gradually slopes down for twenty feet till it reaches a height of six feet. The walls are pretty regularly built of undressed boulders, and they converge inward to four feet at the roof, which is formed of large stones, many of them over seven feet long and four feet wide. Its contents consisted of an accumulation of ashes, and bones of animals, fragments of querns, a stone vessel, and a brass pin.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Iron Ages_, page 292.

In 1816, Professor John Stuart of Aberdeen, discovered a group spread over a space of about a mile in diameter, on what was then a dry moor,¹ in the parishes of Auchindoir and Kildrummy, Aberdeenshire. He estimated the number then discovered in this locality at upwards of forty; and he states that the ground where they lay had originally been a forest, as the trunks of large trees were still dug up there. There was no indication of them on the surface of the ground. The only entrance was a small opening of about eighteen inches wide between two projecting stones, through which a man might enter, and then descending a sloping passage of five or six feet, he comes to a vaulted chamber. The chambers of this group are from six to eight feet in height, from six to nine feet wide, and thirty feet long and upwards. They are built of rough blocks of granite, many of which are five to six feet long and more than a ton in weight; the side walls converge inward by overlapping to form a rude arch, and are covered with large stones. On the surface of the ground close to these structures, Professor Stuart found a number of spaces from ten to fifteen yards square, and about two feet deep, with the earth thrown outward; and these excavated spaces he conjectured to have been the sites of the summer huts of the people, who retired to the underground places in winter, and stored their provisions in them all the year round. He added that no articles of furniture or instruments either of stone or metal had been found in them, so far as could be ascertained, but only wood, ashes, and charcoal――mostly at the inmost end, where in some of them a small opening appeared at the top, supposed to be an outlet for the smoke.² Foundations of huts on the surface of the ground have been observed in association with a few other earth-houses, one example was found near Arbroath, in Forfarshire.³

¹ This moor is now under cultivation.

² _Archæologia Scotica_, Volume II., pages 56‒58.

³ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume IV., pages 492‒499.

In other localities the earth-houses vary much in length, some examples reaching to sixty feet long; and as already observed, some of them have smaller chambers branching off the main chamber. But on the whole they are remarkably similar in structure.

Some resemblances between those underground houses and the chambered cairns may now be noticed. 1, The hidden nature of the entrance, and its lowness and narrowness, are features peculiar to both classes of structures. From a comparison of a considerable number of recorded measurements of the height and width of both classes of structures at their entrances, I have found that the highest entrance in an earth-house is 3 feet, and the lowest 18 inches, the average being about 2 feet. Now the highest entrance of a chambered cairn is 3 feet 6 inches, and its width 2 feet, while the lowest is 21 inches in height, and the same in breadth. The average height and width of the entrances to the passages of the cairns and those of the earth-houses are almost identical; and it is difficult to believe that this coincidence could have been the result of chance. 2, In some of the earth-houses there are small chambers opening off the main chamber, a feature which occurs in some of the chambered cairns. 3, The mode of forming the roof or the device for closing in the walls at the top is similar in both classes of these structures. 4, These coincidences and similarities are difficult to explain, except upon the ground that both classes of these structures were originated by one race of people, and belong to the same period. Moreover the bones of the same animals have been found in both classes of structures; while the mere absence of stone weapons and implements is not of much historic significance, seeing that these rarely occur even in the chambered cairns themselves.

The most probable conclusion seems to be that the people of the Stone Age, who erected the chambered cairns, also originated the underground structures which we call earth-houses; and that they constructed a considerable number of those specimens which are still known to exist, though not necessarily the whole of them. In succeeding centuries such structures may have been constructed in localities where the exigences and circumstances of the people suggested their utility, down even to the time of the departure of the Romans. I take the view suggested by Professor Stuart, that from the first these underground structures have never been continuously occupied as common dwellings, but only at the seasons of extreme cold and frost, when the people resorted to them in order to protect themselves in some measure from the inclemency of the weather. Recently distinct traces of overground huts have been discovered, so closely associated with earth-houses as to leave no doubt that both belonged to the same family. Still it seems that some at least of the earth-houses were occasionally frequented by certain people even late into the Iron Age; but that circumstance affords no evidence to invalidate the conclusion that they were originated by and belonged to the Stone Age people.¹

¹ There is a group of underground structures in Ireland,
but they differ considerably from the Scottish class. The
Irish specimens are mostly associated with forts or raths,
excavated in the ground and enclosed by the rampart of a
fort; and they consist of various forms of chambers which
are connected by low narrow passages. There is also a group
of underground structures in Cornwall, which in some of
their features resemble those of Scotland; but they appear
to have been usually associated with overground dwellings.

From the natural features of the country, and the very varied intersection of the land and water, it might be expected that boats would have come into use at an early period, and this appears to have been the case. The primitive boats of the early inhabitants were made by simply hollowing out the middle of a single oak tree with such tools as have been described, or some have supposed that this was effected by the application of fire. They are sometimes called canoes, and have been often found in lakes associated with the Crannogs. But they have been discovered in every quarter of the country, in lochs and mosses, on the banks and in the beds of rivers; and many of them have been found imbedded at a depth of from thirteen to thirty feet below the surface of the ground. In Lochar Moss, Dumfriesshire, a track bordering on the Solway Firth, a number of canoes have from time to time been dug up, one of which measured 8 feet 8 inches in length, 2 feet in breadth, and 11 inches in depth. The Valley of the Clyde has yielded the greatest number of these single tree boats. Under the streets of Glasgow, and in its vicinity, when digging the foundation of houses, cutting drains, and in operations connected with the harbour work, and the dredging of the channel of the Clyde, nearly thirty have been discovered.¹ These vary considerably in length and depth, but they all belong to the first stage of shipbuilding; which here, and from this primitive starting-point, has at last attained a development as yet unsurpassed in any quarter of the globe.

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume I., pages 44, 211‒213; Volume VI., pages 119, 121,
146, 148, 458; J. Geikie’s _Great Ice Age_, page 212;
Wilson’s _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Volume I., pages
52‒55.

From what has been presented in the preceding pages, we may imagine our early ancestors of the Stone Age as living and moving in a state of comparative safety and comfort. They possessed the greater number of the domesticated animals which are still common in this country; they built such structures for habitations as were suited to their condition and the surrounding circumstances, and the means within their reach. They manifested much intelligence, skill, and industry in the manufacture of their weapons, tools, and implements――using the only available means and materials at their command with admirable ingenuity and striking effect. We can discern and trace the evidence of mind and of thought even in the fragments of their works; and the memorials which they erected to the memory of the dead, have long survived the wreck of proud empires, dynasties, and thrones.