Skara Brae is a well-preserved Neolithic village on the Bay of Skaill on the main island of Orkney, Scotland. Its stone houses were occupied from roughly 3180 BCE to 2500 BCE, making them older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Because there was little wood on Orkney, the inhabitants used local flagstone to make not only walls but also furniture, such as beds, dressers and boxes, which survived in the houses. The village was covered by sand for thousands of years and was exposed by a storm in 1850. It was excavated by the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe in the 1920s, and is part of the UNESCO listing Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
Before and after
- from 4th millennium BCE to 1st millenniumAncient history
- c. 3,201 BCENewgrange passage tomb is built
- from c. 3,200 BCE to 1,050 BCECycladic civilization
- from c. 3,200 BCE to 3,060 BCENaqada III
- from c. 3,180 BCE to 2,500 BCEOrigins of Skara Brae
- from c. 3,150 BCE to 2,890 BCEFirst Dynasty of Egypt
- c. 3,101 BCENarmer unifies Egypt
- from c. 3,100 BCE to 2,686 BCEEarly Dynastic Period of Egypt
- from 31st century BCE to 14th century BCEConstruction of Stonehenge
More in Civilizations & archaeology
- from c. 2,601 BCE to 1,901 BCEThe Indus Valley cities reach maturity
- c. 1,274 BCEConstruction of Abu Simbel
- from 351 BCE to 1494Construction of Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
- from 323 BCE to 30 BCEHellenistic period
- 323 BCEConstruction of Temple of Ephesian Artemis
- 248 BCEConstruction of Terracotta Army
The era
This moment belongs to the Ancient civilizations (3,200 BCE to 500 CE), writing, cities and empires.