The number of Neolithic monuments already discovered and newly discovered on the Orkney Islands (as well as their quality) gives us enough reason to believe that the Scottish outskirts were at that time the center of Northern European civilization and the driving force behind its development.
A BBC Travel correspondent went to the islands to feel the power of this long-inhabited place and, having touched its history, to better understand how our distant ancestors lived.
When in 2003 the owners of the Brodgar farm found a large stone with notches in their plowed field, they immediately realized that this was not an ordinary natural boulder - someone had worked on it to turn it into an artifact.
And they would not be at all surprised if it turned out that this someone lived several thousand years ago - after all, it happened in Scotland, in the Orkney archipelago, where prehistoric monuments are by no means a rarity.
But still, in that year, no one could have imagined that the stone found in the field was a harbinger of what a wonderful discovery.
“I don’t think anyone could [then] have guessed what this find would be,” says Nick Card, chief archaeologist of the expedition (excavating a Neolithic temple complex on Brodgar since 2004 - Ed.). "It changes our understanding of early human history."
Brodgar Farm, which is best known for the artifact that started this excavation, is located on Mainland Island, the largest in the archipelago, 30 miles off the north coast of Scotland.
And the excavation itself is located on the isthmus between Lakes Harrey and Stennes, in the middle of a gold mine that has worked out its resource.
Promotional video:
(As it turned out in the course of archaeological work, on this territory, known as Cape Brodgar, about 5 thousand years ago, the construction of a unique architectural complex began, the complex organization of which suggests that the periphery of the British Isles in the New Stone Age was a center of culture and advanced technologies. - translator's note.]
Brodgar's ring was erected at about the same time as Stonehenge, that is, about 4.5 thousand years ago.
There are two large megalithic structures near the new excavation site. Half a mile to the northwest is the stone circle (or cromlech) "Ring of Brodgar", built at about the same time as the famous Stonehenge, that is, 4.5 thousand years ago. On the other side, a quarter of a mile from the cape, are the Stennes megaliths, a monument two centuries older.
And a little further, about a mile and a half, you will find Barnhouse (a settlement founded 5,100 years ago); cairn Meishau (an artificial structure in the form of a pile of stones, often conical in shape - translator's note).
Maeshow is the most interesting example of prehistoric burial chambers of this type in all of northwestern Europe, built about 5 thousand years ago and forgotten until the Vikings opened it in 1153, and when leaving, left their runic inscriptions on the walls.
And that's not to mention more than a dozen other prehistoric mounds and megaliths in the form of vertically standing stones and stone slabs. (Before the discovery in 2003 at the Brodgar farm, there were already two ancient menhirs in the garden).
All these monuments are only five miles from the best-preserved prehistoric settlement in northern Europe, Skara Bray.
The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae, which appeared in Mainland 5 thousand years ago, is one of the best preserved prehistoric in northwestern Europe.
I traveled to the secluded Scottish islands rich in Neolithic heritage with the hope of restoring my inner connection with the ancient past of mankind.
Many are looking for such an opportunity in Wiltshire in the south-west of England, where Stonehenge is located, but few find it there - primarily due to the huge number of tourists visiting this super popular monument (1.3 million people annually).
In Mainland, aside from the mass tourist routes, the person who feels must have a much better chance of experiencing spiritual union with our distant ancestors, I reasoned.
It turned out that the most interesting archaeological excavations in northern Europe are now taking place here.
A new excavation at Cape Brodgar, on the site of a complex architectural complex of the Neolithic era, equal in size to four fields for playing American football, significantly changes our understanding of the people who lived here more than 5 thousand years ago.
The inscription on the tablet: * This walk will take you 5 thousand years ago *.
However, in order to appreciate this complex, it is also important to see the Ring of Brodgar - a megalithic circle consisting of 26 stones placed vertically (initially there were 60).
It is assumed that there was originally a connection between the two objects.
So, on a blindingly sunny August day, I boarded an open-top bus for the five miles from Stromness to Brodgar.
And then I and a few of my fellow bus passengers climbed the hill. And at some point of this ascent, a wonderful structure suddenly appeared to our eyes: a wide stone ring framed by purple thickets of wild heather crowned the hill like a royal crown.
It is important to understand that this magnificent monument is a product of hard work, which is also a hefty example of human ingenuity and cooperation.
To build such a large cromlech with a width of 104 meters, the four-meter slabs that make up it had to be brought from quarries located ten miles from here (and the first wheel appeared in the British Isles, by the way, only in 1100 BC, i.e. 600 years later).
The moat surrounding the Ring of Brodgar, three meters deep and nine meters wide, was dug into the rocky rock without the use of metal tools.
The Moat of Brodgar's Ring is dug in rocky rock to a depth of three meters; its width is nine meters.
The moat and the supposedly existing earthen rampart around the Ring give researchers reason to consider this megalithic monument as a "henge" (a type of prehistoric architectural structure that is a circular or elliptical area with a rampart and a ditch; the term is applied mainly to monuments located in the British Isles - approx. translator).
The total diameter of the Ring is 130 meters - about the same as the diameter of the London Eye.
If we compare the Ring of Brodgar with other megalithic structures in Britain, then in size it is second only to Avebury and Stanton Drew, but surpasses Stonehenge.
According to experts, it took 80 thousand man-hours to build a moat around the Ring (i.e. 100 people had to work 80 days, 10 hours a day - translator's note).
The original purpose of the Ring of Brodgar is still unknown to us.
For many years it was not even clear why, unlike the Stennes megaliths, it has not one entrance, but two, and why the path goes from one to another.
Thanks to new excavations at Cape Brodgar, a theory arose according to which one of the passages served as an exit, and from it the trail stretched further, to the temple complex located at a distance of half a mile from here, linking it and the Ring not only geographically, but also functionally.
Archaeologists at Cape Brodgar on the last day of the 2015 excavation season.
At Cape Brodgar, archaeologists spend eight weeks each summer; the day of my arrival was the final one in the 2015 season.
The excavation looked like a completely modern construction site, where several large stone buildings were built using the dry masonry method, that is, without the use of cement mortar.
And it was built with excellent quality, I must say. At one of the structures, the walls reached four meters in width, and the adjacent ones converged with each other exactly at right angles.
Each stone, although different from the others in shape, was perfectly matched to the next.
Despite their age of 5 thousand years, the walls of stone buildings at Cape Brodgar look as if they were built today.
But in reality, of course, the object I observed was not being built, but being excavated. And it was built - no matter how hard it is to believe it - five and a half thousand years ago, even before the appearance of mortar and plaster, at a time when there were no levels for aligning and transferring axes, there was not a trace of metal, no wheels, no construction helmets.
Archaeologists have long guessed that the people of the Neolithic era did not live in such a caricatured world as the creators of the American animated series The Flintstones invented for them.
Take, for example, the settlement of Skara Bray, which arose 5 thousand years ago. The walls of the houses were made in two layers - especially for thermal insulation.
Inside there were various furnishings, including built-in wardrobes and stone beds, which must have been covered with animal skins and grass for warmth and softness.
In Skara Brae, houses were thermally insulated, furnished and even had a toilet.
And in one such dwelling, archaeologists have found a toilet, which is now considered the first sample of a bathroom found in Britain.
“They were not very different from us; were as inventive as we are, and in some respects even more inventive,”says Nick Card, director of the excavation at Cape Brodgar. - Most people, thinking about the Stone Age (even the New Stone Age) and the emergence of agriculture, imagine a rather primitive way of life. But, in my opinion, the Neolithic society was not much less dynamic and complexly arranged than our current society.
The temple complex at Cape Brodgar only reinforces this claim. In size and complexity, it surpasses all Neolithic monuments previously found in Europe.
The main building, nicknamed the "cathedral" by archaeologists, covered a total area of 465 square meters, including the courtyard in front of the entrance. The cape was surrounded by a stone wall over 365 m long.
And all these structures were not made of slabs that were somehow thrown over each other, but were carefully built according to a pre-made project.
“These buildings are not just constructions. These are architectural structures,”says Nick Card.
One of the houses in Skara Brae, with stone wardrobe and beds.
However, the Brodgar temple complex changes our understanding of the New Stone Age not only because of its size and the way it was designed.
Until recently, the very first tiled roof to appear in Europe was considered to be the roof of a 13th century building in modern Wales. But at Brodgar's houses, it turns out, the roofs were also tiled!
In addition, the oldest painted walls in northern Europe and the first examples of painted pottery with cut ornaments on black, red and white backgrounds were found at Cape Brodgar.
In total, about 700 samples of Neolithic art were found here - more than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
Mainland's rich material culture does not mean, however, that it was permanently inhabited.
For 1300 years, people have appeared on the island from time to time. And around 2300 AD, when life was already dying out here, the bones of 400 heads of cattle were laid out on Cape Brodgar - the remainder, perhaps, from a very large feast (considering that one cow could feed about 200 people).
Among the megaliths of Stennes, whose age is 4,700 years, modern cows are very fond of grazing.
Although it is still a mystery why people decided to leave Mainland in search of other habitats, the remains of that farewell banquet, as well as all other finds (and how the structures were designed), led archaeologists to believe that the purpose of the architectural complex at the Cape Brodgar was primarily ritual, and pilgrims came here from afar.
The scale of organization and cooperation was obviously enormous. Just imagine how much effort is required for a modern person to arrange a banquet for at least 200 people.
Now multiply this number of guests many times and do not forget to subtract the opportunities that today's communication means give us - to call by phone, write an email, or at least a regular letter …
That is why the architectural complex at Cape Brodgar radically changes our usual view not only of the builders of the Neolithic era, but also of the civilization of that time in general.
He also adds evidence to a hypothesis that, if confirmed, could be the most astonishing theoretical result of the excavation work.
And it consists in the fact that in the New Stone Age this corner of Scotland was not just one of the innovative centers of Britain, but, perhaps, the main or even the only such center.
The Orkney Archipelago is now considered the periphery, and it was once one of the main centers of northern Europe.
Today, the remote geographical position of the 70 islands of the Orkney archipelago means that most travelers simply ignore it, and only those who know and love ancient history come here.
But once it was precisely this location that made it a civilizational crossroads.
The islands lay on the Northern Sea Route (ie the route across the North Sea - translator's note), along which prehistoric people moved from northern Europe to the British Isles and back.
Archaeologists already know, for example, that in Orkney, carved pottery was invented 5100-5300 years ago. And this invention was subsequently developed further in other parts of Britain.
Standing in the middle of an excavation at Cape Brodgar and watching archaeologists brush off layers of artifacts extracted from the ground with a brush, and guides demonstrate the finds to bewitched tourists, I remembered how I expected on the way to Orkney that the quiet solitude of this distant land would help me to tune in in a meditative way.
But even now life here, it turns out, is in full swing. So instead of calming down, I suddenly felt a powerful surge of vital energy - something like that we usually feel when we meet a strong spirit or find ourselves in a true place of power …
Amanda Ruggeri