ISLE OF SKYE, SCOTLAND—Shortly after the glaciers started retreating from northwestern Europe 11,500 years ago, a group of intrepid humans crossed through Doggerland—an ancient landmass covering the North Sea that once connected mainland Europe with Britain—and settled into the far northern reaches of the continent. According to a statement released by the University of Glasgow, archaeological work on the Isle of Skye indicated that many of them settled there. Stone tools recently found at the site of South Cuidrach has shed new light on the earliest human populations to inhabit present-day Scotland. This new evidence, along with several stone circles at nearby sites, represents the highest concentration of early inhabited sites anywhere in Scotland, and indicates that early humans ventured much farther north than previously believed. It is theorized that nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers from the Ahrensburgian culture followed animal herds across Doggerland until they reached the far north of the Isle of Skye, where they encountered a landscape that was drastically changing due to melting glaciers. “The journey made by these pioneering people who left their lowland territories in mainland Europe to travel northwards into the unknown, is the ultimate adventure story,” said University of Glasgow archaeologist Karen Hardy. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Journal of Quaternary Science. For more, go to "Letter from Doggerland: Mapping a Vanished Landscape."
