6000-year-old stone tools found in Cairngorms
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Evidence has been uncovered in the Cairngorms of stone tools made by prehistoric hunter-gatherers over 6000 years ago.
A multi-national team of archaeologists, helped by members of the public, have discovered more than 300 flint artefacts that were used for a wide range of tasks, with some being hafted together to make arrowheads and knives.
The artefacts date from 4000BC, a time when the world's population is estimated to have only numbered between 30 to 40 million people.
That's at least 200 times less than the globe's eight billion inhabitants today.
To try put things into perspective, if the same ratios were transferred to an area such as Moray, then the whole county would have been inhabited by less than 500 people.
The site at Mar Lodge estate where the discoveries were made was first identified as potentially important in 2015.
Test-pitting two years ago helped to determine the site's size and character.
Archaeologists have since been at work over the summer.
The team contained members from University College Dublin, the University of Stavanger in Norway and Ghent University in Belgium.
Professor Graeme Warren from Dublin said: "Small sites like this, used for very short periods of time, are very hard to find and therefore rarely excavated.
"When we do find them, they offer remarkable insights into moments in the past and the ways in which hunter-gatherers lived in Scotland's mountains."
The professionals were helped by amateurs thanks to the Scotland Digs 2023 campaign which aims to let the public find out more about the country's past.
More information can be found at www.digitscotland.com
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