Day 11, Saturday September 26, "The Cairns and back home again"

Happy birthday, Papaw! This morning we will finish up our visit to Inverness (meaning "the mouth of the river Ness" [the Gaelic is Ibhin Nis]) and head back to Edinburgh. There was a less touristy place that we decided to visit. Just a little east of Inverness is a 4000 year old burial site. Yes, that is 2000 B.C. (or BCE if you prefer).  We know very little about people at this time and these burials are mostly a mystery. As many of you know, we have a dog that is a Cairn Terrier (a Toto dog from the Wizard of Oz). They are so named because the Scots would build up large piles of stones called "cairns" out in their fields. They would place stashes of food, water and other provisions in these cairns so that they could have supplies when they stayed out with the sheep at night. Cairn terriers were used to keep vermin out of the cairns and other places around the farms. Today, we learned that the early people of this area also used cairns as burial places.

At this site there were three cairns. One was a closed circle of stones; and they found evidence that this was used as a place of cremation. There were four different sections with a various types of stone used in each section. Out from three sides were mounds of rubble like rays that lead to three of the standing stones that surrounded the cairn in an outer ring. No one know the significance except that like Stonehenge there are standing stones and the sun at the mid-winter solstice lines up perfectly with one.

There are other cairns on each side of this central, complete one. Each of these has an entrance and they discovered some human remains in each. They think the people may have partially cremated their loved ones and then removed their remains to the other two cairns to finish decomposition. They also think that they were  used over and over again rather than as a final resting place for just one person or family.

You can see that there is a ring of large stones all around the outside. The inside is composed of stacked rocks.

Originally, the cairn's top was completely enclosed with a ceiling of rock and a very small tunnel entrance where you see the opening now. There were lintels over the opening so that you'd have to crawl to the center. Over time the top rocks have fallen, leaving it looking like an open circle.

There were no symbols or decorations made in the stones with the exception of some circles carved into 1 or 2 stones in each cairn. Each cairn was surrounded by standing stones that grew in size as they went around the outer perimeter.

To get there we had to drive down one lane roads; no way for two cars to pass unless you both got over on the soft shoulder. As was common, fields of sheep and stone walls were all around. Occasionally there were fields with both cattle and sheep, but we saw a lot more sheep.

We had a wonderful visit to Inverness! But you know...there's no place like home. Or is there? We've already shown you the McDonald's and the Domino's Pizza. Imagine our surprise as we stopped in the city of Perth on the way back to Edinburgh. What did we see? Yep, that's a 24 hour Wal-Mart! Well it is a store called "Asda" and Wal-Mart bought out the company several years back and have turned them into Super-Wal-Marts.  There were people every where, buying food, clothing, automotive supplies and household stuff.  Too bad the economy is not good.  More tomorrow.