Yabba Dabba Doo - Flint-stones found in Scotland

Flint stones found near Biggar, Scotland, suggest humans roamed the area 3,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The flint pieces dating back 14,000 years were discovered in Howburn Farm, South Lanarkshire by a team of researchers from the Biggar Museum Archaeology Group who embarked on the site believing it to be only 3000BC.

The Biggar group, led by Tam Ward, excavated the concentration of flints, believing the site was from the new Stone Age. However, charcoal from a shallow pit was radiocarbon dated to the Iron Age.

Torben Ballin, an independent lithic specialist, and Alan Saville of National Museums Scotland later realised that some of the artefacts were much older, perhaps dating back 14,000 years.

Since then, with help from NMS and Historic Scotland, further study has revealed a number of pieces characteristic of the late upper early stone age of I2,OOOBC.

It is though that the field where the flints were found may have been a camp used by hunters following migrating herds of reindeer, elk or wild horses across land now covered by the North Sea

Until this find, archaeologists said the earliest evidence of human habitation in Scotland was at Cramond, near Edinburgh, where artefacts had been radiocarbon-dated to about 8,400 B.C.