Awesome Orkney

the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney                                                          screen shot

About 3,300 years before the Romans built Hadrian's Wall and 3,000 years before the Chinese began construction of the Great Wall, the Stone Age residents of an archipelago off northern Scotland built a wall that rivaled those more recent accomplishments. It encircled a group of buildings, including one of the largest roofed structures in prehistoric northern Europe. "The people who built this thing had big ideas," says Nick Card, excavation director with the Archaeology Institute at the University of the Highlands and Islands. "They were out to make a statement." What, exactly, that statement was is what Card and his team of archaeologists are trying to find out: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/neolithic-orkney/smith-text
   Despite a short excavation season of six weeks per year, Orkney has been a rich source of archaeological treasure for decades. "If you scratch the surface, it bleeds archaeology," says archaeologist Card (video): http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/magazine/ngm-orkneys?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=pom_20140727&utm_campaign=Content