The Earliest Dwellers in Scotland
How did there come to be a country called Scotland and a people called the Scottish people?
From: Unknown To: 700 B.C.E.
Location: Scotland
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
The Earliest Dwellers in Scotland
From A Short History of Scotland by Peter Hume Brown, 1908.
How did there come to be a country called Scotland and a people called the Scottish people? When we look at a map of Scotland, we see that it is made up of the mainland and a great number of islands lying near it. The mainland stretches from the Pentland Firth in the north to the Cheviot Hills and the Solway Firth in the south. But why does Scotland end at the Cheviot Hills, and how is it that the Hebrides, or Western Islands, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands belong to it? Why are the mainland and all the islands called by the one name of Scotland?
Images from book, by P. Hume Brown.
Then there are two different languages spoken in Scotland. The Highlanders speak Gaelic, the Lowlanders speak English, and yet both Highlanders and Lowlanders are known as Scotsmen. How did they come to be called by this one name though they speak different languages, and differ from each other in many other ways? It is to answer these questions that this book has been written, and we have to go a long way back to answer them.
The land we now call Scotland was not always known by that name, and the people who lived in it were not always called Scots. There was, indeed, a time when neither the land nor its people had a name to themselves. For Scotland, like all other countries, was once inhabited by people who were not civilised, but were merely savages or barbarians. As these people did not write books, how do we know that they once lived in Scotland?
One day, in the year 1894, some workmen were quarrying stones in the side of a cliff opposite the Bay of Oban, in Argyleshire. On digging into the cliff, they came to a cave twenty-five feet long and more than sixteen feet wide, and in the cave they found things which showed that men must once have lived in it. There were heads of hammers made of stone, and many tools and implements made of horn, such as harpoons, chisels, borers, and pins. The skulls of human beings were also found, and the bones of animals which had been killed and eaten by the cave-dwellers, who must, therefore, have been clever hunters and fishers. At what time these men lived nobody can say, but it must have been more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ.
And not only in Argyleshire but in other parts of the country, things have been found that must have been made by men's hands in those far-off times. For instance, on the Carse of Stirling, quite near to the town of that name, there was found the skeleton of a whale, and on its skull was the head of an axe made of a deer's horn, which must have been used by someone when the whale was cast ashore. And, indeed, near the same place the skeletons of no fewer than twelve other whales have been found, which shows that in those times the sea must have come much farther in than it does now.
In the Carse of Stirling, also, there have been found great heaps of shells oyster-shells, mussel-shells, and others with fireplaces beside them. This proves that the people who once lived there fed on shellfish, which they roasted in the fire. Then in different parts of the country, in deep bogs and in the beds of rivers, canoes have been dug up, which were made by hollowing out trees with fire. We learn from this that the men to whom they belonged were able to sail on lakes and rivers, and even some distance on the sea.
Now, when we look at the things that have been found in different parts of the country, we see that those early dwellers in Scotland did not stand still, but became more and more civilised in their ways of living. We know this from the tools and ornaments they made, which were very different at different times. In the farthest back times they made their tools and other things of stone or bone or horn, and often they fashioned them so skilfully that we cannot understand how they were made.
The time when men made tools of stone is called the Stone Age but a day came when a great step forward was taken. They learned to make bronze, which is got from the melting and mixing of copper and tin, and is much harder than either of these metals. Of course, they did not stop all at once using stone, but they began to use bronze more and more, and became very skilful in making things with it.
A great many articles of bronze have been found in ditches and peat-bogs and other places. For instance, bronze daggers have been dug up, and razors, spear-heads, sickles for cutting corn, shields, and even trumpets. Ornaments, too, such as bracelets, necklaces, finger-rings, ear-rings, and crowns, show that the people of the Bronze Age, as it is called, were not always thinking of fighting, but also took pleasure in looking at beautiful things. It is very interesting also to know that the men of the Bronze Age understood the use of gold, for a great many gold ornaments have been found which were made by their hands.
Then another step forward was taken iron began to be used instead of bronze, though, of course, bronze was only given up by degrees. The use of iron instead of bronze made a great change in the way of making weapons, tools, and ornaments, as these had now to be hammered out instead of being cast in moulds.
Many articles belonging to the Iron Age have been found in different parts of Scotland. For example, out of a loch in Kirkcudbrightshire there was once taken a large pot of bronze, in which were found tools and implements such as axe-heads, hammers, saws, and nails, all made of iron. In the Bronze Age we saw that ornaments were made of gold, but in the Iron Age silver ornaments were much more used. The chief thing to be remembered about the Iron Age is, however, that it was the time just before books began to be written. And, indeed, in the Iron Age, in some countries, men knew the alphabet and began to write, though whether this was the case in Scotland we cannot tell.
Before we have done speaking of the Prehistoric Times, as they are called, there is one other thing that must not be forgotten, and that is, the way in which the people buried their dead. It is curious that the tombs where the dead were buried have lasted longer than the houses they inhabited when they were living. In different parts of the country there are still to be seen great circles of tall unhewn stones, though sometimes most of the stones have fallen. Inside these circles there are great heaps of stones, called cairns, and when the stones are removed it is found that people have been buried there. Now, it is interesting to know that these tombs were differently made at different periods, and this enables us to tell whether those who were buried in them lived during the Stone Age or the Bronze Age or the Iron Age.
In the tombs of the later Stone Age there are usually chambers where the dead were buried, whereas in the tombs of the early Bronze Age only a few such chambers are found, and none in those of the Iron Age. Sometimes the bodies were buried whole, as bones found in the tombs show, but usually they were burned. In the tombs of the Bronze Age beautiful urns made of clay are found, in which the ashes of the dead had been put. It is strange to discover that in the graves are also found the heads of arrows, of spears, and of axes, and ornaments such as beads, necklaces, and ear-rings. Some of these ornaments are very precious too.
What could these people have meant by putting such things in tombs, that could be of no use to the dead? Was it because they expected the dead some day to rise from the grave, and use their weapons and ornaments, just as they had done before they died? Or was it only to show how much they honoured and loved those who had passed away? To these questions we cannot be sure that we have the right answer.
What has been told in this chapter is learned from the different things that have been found above the ground and below it, all over the country. But after this we have books also to tell us what we should like to know; and so the new time is called the Historic Age, to mark it off from the Prehistoric Times of which we have been speaking.
Brown, Peter Hume. A Short History of Scotland. Oliver and Boyd, 1908.
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