Abstract
IT is doubtful whether it can be proved that any cultures earlier than the Mesolithic existed in Scotland. This is perhaps surprising, as there would seem to have been no climatic reason why Scotland should not have been habitable during the main interglacial epoch in the middle of the Great Ice Age in any event. Maybe the scanty populations of the Old Stone Age never reached the extreme northwestern edge of the Old World. Mesolithic industries contemporary with those farther south have been unearthed at a number of sites. But many of the apparently Mesolithic industries in Scotland are actually much more recent in date and contemporary with the Neolithic or even early Metal Age farther south. Even in the Cleveland hills of Yorkshire, sites are known where pigmy tools of Mesolithic facies occur in real association with leaf-shaped arrowheads. Such an overlap of cultures is not surprising. The Neolithic civilization in Britain was rather due to the incoming of new modes of life than to hordes of invaders; in large part it was a case of 'neolithicizing' the autochthonous inhabitants. Off the beaten track, the older culture continued to survive, influenced to a greater or less degree by the more advanced ideas spreading slowly over the land.
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Early Scottish Prehistory. Nature 155, 449 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155449a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155449a0