A City of Stone Between the Lochs
On a narrow isthmus between the Loch of Harray and the Loch of Stenness, a Neolithic complex of monumental buildings is rewriting the history of prehistoric Britain. The Ness of Brodgar, discovered by chance in 2003, is a 2.5-hectare site with structures dating back to at least 3300 BCE, pre-dating Stonehenge's main phase. The entire complex was enclosed by a massive boundary wall, parts of which were 4 meters wide—thicker than Hadrian's Wall.
Archaeologists have uncovered more than a dozen large, non-funerary buildings, none of which are simple domestic houses. The largest, known as Structure Ten, measures 25 meters long by 19 meters wide, with immense 4-meter-thick walls that once supported a stone-tiled roof. The builders used carefully selected and dressed flagstone, a sedimentary rock that splits easily into flat slabs. Some buildings feature early examples of stone roofing tiles, and the site even contains Neolithic drains that still function. Many stones were decorated with geometric carvings, and over 900 such examples have been recorded. Exceptionally, traces of yellow, red, and black pigments show the walls of these structures were once painted.