READING, ENGLAND—A set of 12,000-year-old tools made by the Ahrensburgian culture were unearthed on the coastline of the island of Islay in the Inner Hebrides. Tools of this style are usually found in mainland Europe, Denmark, and Sweden. Finding such Ice Age tools in Scotland suggests that the Ahrensburgian people were coastal foragers who may have hunted sea mammals from skin boats in northern Scotland during the summer months. “The Ice Age tools provide the first unequivocal presence of people in Scotland about 3,000 years earlier than previously indicated. This moves the story of Islay into a new historical era, from the Mesolithic into the Palaeolithic,” Karen Wicks of the University of Reading said in a press release. The site was discovered when some pigs, who had been released on the island to reduce bracken, uncovered some Mesolithic artifacts. A resident alerted the team from the University of Reading. To read more about archaeology in Scotland, go to “Neolithic Europe’s Remote Heart.”
