Orkney is well worth a visit, the archeological sites are truly amazing and when you're done with that you can visit Highland Park and sip some world class scotch.
I agree, I’m very fond of Orkney. I’ve been several times on short breaks. Skara Brae is both smaller than you think it should be (studied it in primary school) and more impressive (over 5000 years old). A very peaceful place with great archeology, landscapes and seabirds (got really close to puffins on the last trip) but it is always windy.
I always find it enormously frustrating when stories like this only include one picture, like this one does. Pictures would really help in understanding what the overall shape looks like, and surely they exist.
Either way, while frustratedly seeing if I could find more (and only turning up the same picture in cribbed news articles on other sites) I found the 3D modelling profile of the lead researcher, with some 3D models of archaeological sites in Orkney, as well as others, and thought other readers here might be interested: https://sketchfab.com/hugoandersonwhymark
Thanks, very cool.
As kids back in the 1950s my sister and I could wander around inside Skara Brae. I've been back several times since, but not actually in the rooms again of course, so those 3D models are a wonderful revisit.
Edit to add that it's a little disturbing to find I can go underground lol.
This is an exciting discovery but by way of comparison, the oldest egyptian pyramids are roughly the same age, Longshan culture didn't have big monuments but high tech like plows ceramics, etc.
Slightly tangential, but I've always wanted to see the Orkneys and their archaeology since I read Kim Stanley Robinson's "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations":
