A NEOLITHIC settlement in Orkney has been shortlisted for the BBC Countryfile Magazine’s best heritage site award.
Skara Brae, in Sandwick, is up against Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, Rutland Water and Tenby.
The winner of the award will be decided by an online public vote, which ends on February 28.
Author Bill Bryson, who compiled the shortlist, described Skara Brae as “miraculously preserved” and said the site’s surviving eight dwellings “are older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt and yet feel as if they were vacated only yesterday”.
Skara Brae is the best preserved Neolithic village in northern Europe and offers a window into the lives of farmers who lived there between 3,200 and 2,500 BC.
Its survival through the ages is thanks to the design of the original builders, who buried the stone-slab walls up to roof level in clay soil and waste material in order to provide insulation and protection from the elements.
The villagers were farmers, raising large cattle and sheep and growing a little barley.
Their diet contained many foods that would be regarded as luxuries today, including venison and oysters.
At some time around 2,500BC, Skara Brae was abandoned.
The exact reasons have long since been lost in time. However, one plausible explanation is that the community became untenable after the climate changed for the worse.
Skara Brae, along with other Orkney sites Maes Howe and the Ring of Brodgar, were designated as a World Heritage site in 1999.
Its nomination for the best heritage site award follows a recent flagship BBC series about Neolithic Orkney.
Meanwhile, Scottish Government statistics have revealed the tourism industry in Argyll and the Isles is outperforming Scotland as a whole as the region records a surge in visitor spending power.
As the Argyll and the Isles Tourism Co-operative prepares for its sixth annual tourism summit, it has welcomed figures showing that visitor spend in the region increased from £199million to £270m from 2011 to 2014 – a rise of 36 per cent, compared to just four per cent for Scotland as a whole.
In the same timeframe, overseas spend increased from £36m to £46m – a rise of 28 per cent, compared to a Scotland-wide increase of 23 per cent.
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