Ardnamurchan's First People

Genetic evidence suggests that the first humans to settle in west Scotland came from Ireland. Their culture was Mesolithic - middle Stone Age - and they arrived 9,ooo years ago, moving up the coast in small groups, living in caves, rock shelters or crude camps but never staying long in one place. If anyone came before them, the evidence is lost, destroyed beneath the glaciers that covered Scotland until about 12,000 years ago.

As the ice melted the landscape left behind resembled today's open, treeless tundra, the alternately frozen and boggy home of mammoth, woolley rhinoceros and sabre-toothed tiger. After a brief return of the glaciers, which formed on Rhum, Mull and Skye between 11 and 10,000 years ago, conditions warmed enough for birch, juniper and willow to thrive. Later, perhaps around 8,500 years ago, these trees gave way to hazel, pine and oak which were inhabited by elk, wild cattle, red deer, wolf, bear, lynx and wild boar. Little wonder that the early human explorers stuck to the coastlines, particularly to islands such as Rhum, Canna, Eigg, Oronsay and Ulva, off Mull. But on the Applecross peninsula, some 103 sites have been identified which were inhabited by Mesolithic people.

Sites on Applecross are abundant because, between 1997 and 2004, Historic Scotland funded the Scottish First Settlers project which concentrated its search on eastern Skye and Applecross. When the glaciers melted sea level rose but, with the weight of ice removed, the land bobbed up, so the beaches and cliff lines from that time lie about 10m above present sea level, and it is along this contour that most of the sites occur.

The characteristic sign of a mesolithic site is a shell midden, a pile of discarded seashells, mostly limpets, whelks and periwinkles. Mixed in with these are fish bones, the bones of deer and wild cattle, and some fruits, roots and nuts. Sometimes these stone-aged rubbish dumps lie in front of caves, as at MacArthur's Cave near Oban, at other times they are in the open at the back of a beach. Occasionally they contain man's earliest tools, made from antler or bone, or small flakes of hard stone. Flint, which makes the best tools, is rare in this part of Scotland, so hard, local rocks were used, one of which was a bloodstone from Rhum.

All the evidence suggests that they had boats - how else could they have crossed from Ireland?

Their movement was part of the great migration of modern man out of Africa which started between 100 and 60,000 years ago in east Africa and followed coastlines. few of these pioneer groups reached Scotland, so the population density was perhaps one person for every twenty square miles, yet genetic research into the R1b marker has suggested that 75% of today's Scots can trace their descent back to these first settlers.

As far as I know, no shell middens have been found on West Ardnamurchan, though there are plenty of beaches along the 10m contour. They're sure to be there - we need to start looking.

[Photo: Carraig, or the Cat's Face, seen from near Sanna, with the mountains of Moidart in the distance]