The country is a great variety of rolling lowlands, jagged Highlands, lochs, forests ,moors, peat bogs, glens and a striking coastline. I have not even mentioned the majestic cities and towns nor the indigenous population who, over the centuries have travelled to just about every part of the globe and made their mark in all walks of life.
The physical forces that carved out the topographical features were epic.
Around 16000 BC an ice age was well under way and buried a good part of Northern Europe under vast ice fields and glaciers.
The drop from previous temperatures, as the catalyst to the ice age, was around 10 degrees centigrade and this persisted for around 3500 years.
What are now the highest mountain peaks in Scotland would only just be poking out of the massive glaciers. The dead weight of such a volume of ice exerted significant pressure on the geological base and over such a prolonged period this squashed and compressed the bedrock and strata as much one kilometre from the established level.
It was not a uniform effect and bulbs of pressure resulted in new mountain ranges where the ice was not as dense.
The ice fields were the birthplace of glaciers which crept along at what will have been a laborious pace had there been any humans capable of surviving in the deep-frozen climate.
Temperatures did fluctuate even through the ice age and this caused the gouging and chiselling glaciers to ebb and flow along a south west or north east axis which accounts for the topography that exists today in the Great Glen and characterises the dramatic appearance of Scotland to which tourists flock in their millions every year.
The bulldozing process of the glaciers forcibly distributed the natural resources of Scotland to other parts of the United Kingdom and much of the great fertile agricultural silt, sand and clay soils of the Vale of York and Eastern England originated from the northern areas. The Holderness Plain of East Yorkshire has extensive boulder clays which were dumped and stranded with the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age having been dragged along under the ice and in the meltwaters for more than 200 miles.
In or around 11500 BC there was a gentle warming effect in the climatic conditions. Land areas emerged and released from the weight of ice began to rise up to attain their previous contours. A warmer climate brought rains and there was a rapid return of fertility and foliage with woodlands and forests establishing themselves over much of the countryside.
Tree species included hazel. oak. elm and birch whose vegetation mulched and enriched further the soils.Wildlife was able to migrate from warmer parts of the great landmass that is now Europe and Asia as there was a landbridge in what is now the English Channel.
The sight of large herds of caribou and deer would have been common. The forests were an ideal habitat for wild boar, otter, bears and wolves .
The Scottish landscapes that are such a magnet for visitors began to take hold and this included the peat bog.
The first human visitors also arrived although there remains considerable debate over where they came from. The prehistoric populations of Northern Europe were now able to thrive and grow and as hunter gatherers it was a case of having to forage farther and wider to meet hungry family or tribal groups. The individual hunting ground for a single prehistoric inhabitant has been estimated at some four square miles.
Life on the land was not, as may be portrayed, a paradise.
Far from it; there were earthquakes of up to a 7.0 equivalent on the modern Richter Scale and these occurred with frightening irregularity for millenia. Cold snaps which will have been feared as a reversion to an ice age also occurred,
The land continued to rise quickly, faster than sea level although the release of melt waters from the retreating ice shelf would soon make up for this.
Archaeological evidence of human colonies have been excavated in the far western islands of Scotland on Rhum, Colonsay in the Hebrides and with a major dig site on Isla dated to 6500 BC. On South Uist prehistoric mummified remains were found under stone dwellings dating from 1000 BC. Their origins have never been determined, not helped by the fact that the peat bog preserved pair of figures were actually made up of the body parts of 6 individuals.
Other sites have shown that previously nomadic hunter gatherers were beginning to form settlements from the discovery of burnt and cleared woodland to keep livestock and assist in hunting for food. Essential skills to survive included snaring, setting pit traps and using dogs although these will have been close descendants of wolves.
Climate and the forces of nature were always major factors to affect and impeded human existence.
Around 5840 BC a Tsunami rolled in from the North Sea with a wave height of nearly 9 metres which will have been devastating to a race already of some precarious existence in what must have seemed like a most volatile and unstable land.
Sea levels were now rising and what are now Firths of Forth and Tay were almost connected.
The landbridge to the continental mass was engulfed by the rising waters and Scotland forcibly, and not for the last time, became part of the greater land mass of the British Isles.
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