Nemo me impune lacessit *
Scotland has been inhabited since at least the Mesolithic period; about nine thousand years.
These first Scots were hunter gathers who left behind little to show for their passage but stone
weapons and tools. In the Neolithic period, people
lived in a village in Orkney which we know today as
Skara Brae. Here, long hidden and protected was
buried a warren of remarkable stone buildings. The
village numbers half a dozen houses and some
additional buildings. Some of the houses even have
under-floor drains for indoor sanitation. Built around
3100 BCE, the village predates the Great Pyramid of
Egypt and, by more than a thousand years,
Stonehenge.
Skara Brae is certainly the most remarkable remains
of prehistoric life in Scotland and has contributed much to our knowledge but that knowledge
remains incomplete. Who were these people who lived there? What, if any. relationship did they have
with later inhabitants?
Around 2000 BCE the first evidence of the
Bronze Age appears in Scotland. At this
time we see the first evidence of raiding
with the building of brochs and crannogs.
Brochs, unique to Scotland, are tall round
towers with tapering, double-skinned dry
stone walls. Between the double walls were
stairs leading to separate stories. With
only a single doorway and no windows they
were almost impregnable. There are the
remains of about five hundred of these
brochs in Scotland , mainly in the north
and west.
Crannogs are buildings built on artificial
or modified islands on the lochs of
Scotland. There were eighteen of these
on Loch Tay alone. Like Brochs they were
obviously built for defense painting a
picture of uncertain times yet are
evidence of a high degree of social order
and organization. Carbon dating acually
suggests that crannogs could well pre-
date the bronze age. The picture to the
right is of a replica built on Loch Tay.
Apart from some meager records of trading voyages, few written accounts exist before the Romans
came to Britain. Despite the relative ease with which they conquered the southern part of Britain,
their inroads into Scotland were few and short-lived. The Roman defeat of the Picts, as they named
them, at Mons Graupius tells us something of the Caledonians. That they could raise an army, by Roman
reports, of thirty thousand proves that they had some centralized organization. That despite that loss
they continued to discourage Roman incursion, allows us to assume that their warlike, independent
nature was unsubdued.
For four centuries then the Picts along with the northern British Tribes, the Damnonii, Novantae,
Selgovae and Votadini remained largely free of Roman influence. The building of the Antonine and
Hadrian walls is proof, if it were required, of the propensity to raiding that threatened the Pax
Romana. Meanwhile, in Ireland, the Scotii, along with the other Celtic tribes of that second
unconquered part of the British Isles, looked with avarice at the rich pickings to be found amongst
their ‘civilized’ neighbours. As Rome’s power dwindled and legions were recalled to the heart of their
empire, the restlessness of the peoples beyond their borders grew.
In 367, the great ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ saw a simultaneous assault on Roman Britain. From the north,
the Picts and Northern Britons broke through Hadrian’s Wall, the Scots swept in across the Irish Sea
and Angles and Saxons overwhelmed the southern and eastern coastal forts. Although the defenses
were patched up, the writing was on the wall and by 410 the last Roman army left. For the next few
hundred years, it was the four peoples of the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ who were to vie for ascendancy in
Scotland.
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