As you know, elves are fairy-tale characters. But they had their own prototype - the Irish and Scottish Seeds, or "people of the hills". However, the Seeds were also mythical characters, despite the fact that up to modern times, all the Celts were completely convinced of their existence.
However, recent archaeological finds force us to reconsider this position - ancient settlements have been found in Britain that exactly correspond to the descriptions of the mythological abodes of the Sids.
Actually, a seed is a magic hill. Inhabitants live in it - they were also called Sids. To introduce them, remember the elves from the writings of John Ruel Tolkien (who was a professor who specialized in Celtic mythology and definitely knew what he was talking about).
It was believed that they were slender, graceful and skillful in all magic, but people conquered their lands, after which the Seeds had to hide in the magical hills and become local deities.
For a long time we thought that these were just fairy tales. Until the traces of an ancient civilization were discovered on the Orkney Islands, which can be considered truly magical for the Neolithic era.
The most famous settlement of this civilization is now known as Skara Bray and dates back to about the third and a half millennium BC. This was several thousand years before the birth of Jesus, the construction of the Temple of Solomon, and about half a millennium before the destruction of Stonehenge.
The settlement was discovered in 1850, when a hurricane tore off a layer of earth, under which were … ancient dwellings. The excavation was originally started by William Graham Watt of Scale, a local landowner, but full archaeological research did not begin until 1920.
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Actually, the settlements are dugouts fortified with stones, covered from above with logs, sod and moss. But the dugouts are truly royal - each room was on average 40 square meters, with stone-paved floors and stone furniture.
Dwellings were made right in the hills - a suitable hill was "opened", rooms were rummaged in it, reinforced with stonework. A smithy and a complex drainage system were also built to protect against flooding.
But most importantly, these were not just cobblestones, but perfectly cut stones. One got the impression that professionals worked on the construction, in no way inferior to the medieval ones.
And judging by the richly decorated artifacts, it was a rather complex culture, and many scientists are wondering how it was possible to achieve such development in the absence of writing.
Skara Bray is not the only monument of this culture. It also includes the settlement of Barnhouse on Mainland Island, or the Nap of Hawar, preserved in almost perfect condition, as well as the tomb of Maeshow.
The tomb is worth mentioning separately. To get into it, you need to overcome a long 11-meter-high corridor, but then you find yourself in a spacious room of perfectly regular shape with a ceiling about four meters high. The quality of construction is respectable by our standards.
Unfortunately, we will never know who was buried in this tomb, since it was once plundered by the Vikings. Who, like a true hooligan, painted the walls with their runes. But in general, the ancient culture of the Orkney Islands quite accurately coincides with how the magical hills of the Celts were later described.
