TELEVISION, penicillin and radar number among the great inventions and discoveries by Scots in the 20th century, but Scottish ingenuity was already benefiting mankind more than 5,000 years ago.

Proof is emerging from a mysterious stone circle on Orkney that Scots invented practical astronomy thousands of years before the Babylonians and Greeks codified the science.

The Standing Stones of Stenness near Stromness were raised more than five millennia ago, and ever since then the reason for their existence has been the subject of much speculation – with conjectures ranging from them being sun and star maps to burial sites.

They are less famous than the remarkable Callanish standing stones on the Isle of Lewis, but the Stenness stones are thought to be marginally older than their Hebridean counterparts, dating to around 3,100BCE, with both sets of stones around 500 years older than Stonehenge and dating to around the same period as the Egyptian royal tombs which were built before the Great pyramids.

Now a team of researchers in the West of Scotland Megalithic Landscape Project run by the University of Adelaide has provided dramatic evidence that the ancient Orcadians were astronomers whose standing stones were purposely positioned in alignment with the cyclical movements of the sun and the moon.

Furthermore, the statistical analysis by the Australian team proves that there was a complex relationship between the alignment of the stones, the surrounding landscape and horizon, and the movements of the sun and the moon across that landscape.

Dr Gail Higginbottom, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University, is leading the project.

She said: “Nobody before this has ever statistically determined that a single stone circle was constructed with astronomical phenomena in mind – it was all supposition.”

She added that the ancient dwellers in Scotland “connected the Earth to the sky with their earliest standing stones” and that “this practice continued in the same way for 2,000 years.”

The researchers examined ‘henge’ sites of standing stones across Scotland and the rest of Britain in detail.

They found that about half the sites were surrounded by one landscape pattern and the other half by the complete reverse.

Dr Higginbotham explained: “These chosen surroundings would have influenced the way the Sun and Moon were seen, particularly in their rising and setting at special times, like when the Moon appears at its most northerly position on the horizon, which only happens every 18.6 years.

“For example, at half the sites, the northern horizon is relatively higher and closer than the southern and the summer solstice Sun rises out of the highest peak in the north. At the other half of sites, the southern horizon is higher and closer than the northern, with the winter solstice Sun rising out of these highest horizons.

“These people chose to erect these great stones very precisely within the landscape and in relation to the astronomy they knew.”

The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science details the use of 2D and 3D technology in testing the patterns of alignment of the standing stones.


Stones on Orkney have secured place in sun

THEY have always been in the shadow of the extraordinary stones at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis but now the Standing Stones of Stenness on Orkney are being feted as the proof that the ancient people of Scotland were among the world’s first, if not the first, practical astronomers, writes Hamish MacPherson.

Stenness has long been the subject of much speculation, with conjecture ranging from it being a star map to a burial site.

In fact it is probably both because standing stones across Scotland have been shown to be both astronomical guides and cemeteries where human remains have been found close to the stones.

Orkney’s astonishing Neolithic World Heritage Site includes Stenness and the settlements of Skara Brae and Barnhouse, Maeshowe-type chambered cruciform passage tombs, and carved spiral motifs, as well as the Ness of Brodgar temple complex – among the oldest buildings in Europe dating from around 3,100 BCE to 2,800 BCE. 

By the 19th century AD Sir Walter Scott was able to say the stones were related to Norse rituals from the Viking era. And thanks to the Australians, now we know their original use was astronomical and all about the sun and the moon.