At Howburn Farm in South Lanarkshire, a scattering of flints, discovered by the Biggar Archaeology Group, turned out to be the earliest evidence found of human habitation in Scotland. The flints have been dated between 12,000 and 14,000 B.C. The implements are about 4cm in length, and as many as 40,000 fragments have been uncovered so far.

This discovery has changed the previous belief that Palaeolithic man had’t travelled further north than the Midlands, with Creswell Crags often considered the northern limit of Palaeolithic settlement.

Lowborn Farm by Bigger in the Scottish Borders

Much of Scotland would have been under ice. This was the time of the last Ice Age which was followed by temperatures rising around 13,000 BC. People were able to move to new lands now freed from the Ice. The temperatures for the next 3,000 years changed dramatically, going through phases of extreme cold to warm periods. It was in this warm phase probably around 12,000 BC, that the remarkable new finds at Howburn Farm belong.

Lowborn Farm Excavations

The flints were probably used by hunters to kill reindeer, mammoth and giant elk and to cut up prey and prepare their skins.

To put this in perspective.  The size of these prehistoric animals next to a person, armed only with a flint.

Size of an Elk

Size of a Mammoth

Initial estimates suggested stone tools at the scene were made in around 2000 BCE, but in 2009 they were shown to be more than four times as old, making them the earliest signs of humanity so far discovered in Scotland. The flints were described as “strikingly similar” to tools produced in continental Europe during the same period.
“These tools represent a real connection with archaeological finds in north-west Germany, southern Denmark and north-west Holland – a connection not seen elsewhere in Britain at this time,’ says Alan Saville, a Senior Curator in Earliest Prehistory at the National Museums of Scotland who is also the President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and a specialist in the study of flaked flint and stone tools.

“This discovery is both intriguing and revolutionises our ideas about where humans came from in this very early period.

“In southern Britain, early links are with northern France and Belgium. Howburn is just one chance discovery and further such discoveries will no doubt emerge.”

“The climate had improved when the game hunters arrived, but the return of glacial weather is thought to have driven humans away until around 1,000 years later. A now-destroyed cave in Argyll had previously provided the earliest evidence of humans in Scotland.”

Howburn Farm is thought to have been an ancient camp where the hunters would make their flint tools. It is thought that these early people were hunting parties and not the ancestors of future Scots, that they took their hunt back across the North Sea basin towards Denmark and Germany. This was a nomadic life which persisted for thousands of years, until the neolithic age saw the advent of farming.

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12 pits were found

Archaeologists excavating Warren Field, an area next to Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire from 2004-06 uncovered 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months.  Unusual crop marks had been spotted from the air by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) which led to the dig being started.

Dave Cowley, aerial survey projects manager at RCAHMS, said: “We have been taking photographs of the Scottish landscape for nearly 40 years, recording thousands of archaeological sites that would never have been detected from the ground…Warren Field stands out as something special, however. It is remarkable to think that our aerial survey may have helped to find the place where time itself was invented.”

Archaeologists believe now they have discovered the world’s oldest lunar “calendar” in the world.

A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago.

Vince Gaffney, Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Birmingham, led the analysis project.

He said: “The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly 5,000 years before the first formal calendars known in the Near East …In doing so, this illustrates one important step towards the formal construction of time and therefore history itself.”

An artist’s impression of warren field about 10000 years ago showing burning material in one of the pits.

The experts who analysed the pits said they may have contained a wooden post.

The pits were placed to copy the positions of the moon – identifying the time of the year.

The Mesolithic “calendar” is thousands of years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in Mesopotamia.

The pit alignment also aligns on the Midwinter sunrise to provided the hunter-gatherers with an annual “astronomic correction” in order to better follow the passage of time and changing seasons.

The universities of St Andrews, Leicester and Bradford were also involved.
Dr Richard Bates, of the University of St Andrews, said the discovery provided “exciting new evidence” of the early Mesolithic Scotland.
He added: “This is the earliest example of such a structure and there is no known comparable site in Britain or Europe for several thousands of years after the monument at Warren Field was constructed.”

Crathes Castle

Crathes Castle and its estate is in the care of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).
From 2004 to 2006, trust staff and Murray Archaeological Services excavated the site.
NTS archaeologist Dr Shannon Fraser said: “This is a remarkable monument, which is so far unique in Britain.
“Our excavations revealed a fascinating glimpse into the cultural lives of people some 10,000 years ago – and now this latest discovery further enriches our understanding of their relationship with time and the heavens.”

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