[00:15.20]There are the remains of Stone Age life dotted all over Britain and Ireland.
[00:21.58]But nowhere as abundantly as Orkney,
[00:24.00]with its mounds,
[00:24.94]graves and above all its great circles of standing stones like here at Brodgar,
[00:30.74]vast, imposing and utterly unknowable.
[00:38.72]But Orkney boasts another Neolithic site,
[00:40.63]that is, in its way,
[00:41.88]even more impressive than Brodgar,
[00:44.39]the last thing you would expect from the Stone Age,
[00:47.41]a shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient domestic life.
[00:52.84]Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island,
[00:55.37]a village called Skara Brae.
[01:07.03]Here, beneath an area no bigger than the 18th grade of a golf course
[01:11.26]lies Europe's most complete Neolithic community,
[01:15.29]miraculously preserved for 5,000 years
[01:18.06]under a blanket of sand and grass
[01:20.66]until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm.
[01:36.66]This is a recognisable village,
[01:39.53]neatly fitted into its landscape between the pasture and sea,
[01:43.57]intimate, domestic and self-sufficient.
[01:46.59]And although they were technically still in the Stone Age in the Neolithic period,
[01:50.72]these dwellings are not huts,
[01:52.62]they're true houses,
[01:53.91]built from the sandstone slabs that lie all around the island
[01:57.64]which gave stout protection to the villagers here at Skara Brae,
[02:01.91]from their biting Orcadian winds.