AS anyone who has visited Orkney will know, there is perhaps nowhere better on earth to get a glimpse of what life was like for our Neolithic ancestors. Sites such as Skara Brae, Maeshowe, and Ring of Brodgar not only extend our knowledge of human endeavour but exercise our individual and collective imaginations.

This is perhaps why the new insights into the lives of people living in Orkney between 3,200 and 2,500BC provided by recent research are so fascinating.

Professor Alex Bayliss of Historic England contends that there were opposing communities on the islands that, having made their way north from mainland Europe using very different routes, had distinctive ways of life. The different burial rituals and varied types of pottery unearthed by archaeologists working at different sites appear to support this theory.

In a challenge to previous thinking, Professor Bayliss believes there were rivalries between them, which can be discerned in the decisions they made about where to live, how to farm, where and when to gather together, how to honour the dead.

Not only does this research contribute to our understanding of the period, but it also has the potential to provide us with solace. After all, there is surely something comforting in knowing that our ancient ancestors engaged in petty rivalries just as we do. Plus ca change.