Science 'Extraordinary discovery' at Orkney Neolithic site - scientists refuse to say what. - I WANT TO BELIEVE

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7836wvx4q4o

https://archive.ph/D5w3V

Archaeologists are to resume digging at the Ness of Brodgar on Orkney after 3D radar technology led to an "extraordinary discovery".

The dig team at the Ness, one of the most important Neolithic sites in the British Isles, are not revealing what they believe the find to be until more work is done.

But they say it is like nothing else ever found at the site – and may not even be Neolithic.

The Ness of Brodgar – a strip of land between two lochs - was the scene of 20 years of excavations until work officially ended in 2024.

The digs uncovered 40 structures making up a cluster of buildings which showed it was a significant settlement in prehistoric Orkney.

However, a further phase of work using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) was carried out this summer - producing three-dimensional images of the whole site for the first time.

The scientific study produced an unexpected discovery which the team describe as "totally dissimilar to anything else we've uncovered".

The only clue from the excavation team is that Ness is "a site that can be seen to be defined by straight lines and rectangular forms, from the architecture down to the art".

Archaeologist Nick Card - who worked on the digs from 2004 and will return for the latest work - told the BBC's Radio Scotland Breakfast programme: "We think this is so unusual that it could add a new chapter to the history of the Ness.

"It's at a bit of the site where there doesn't seem to be any deep archaeology, so it's not like we're getting into another 20 years of excavations.

"The archaeology that will be uncovered will be quite different. Don't expect three-dimensional Neolithic buildings. Possibly it is not Neolithic, I think probably later, but it could be contemporary."

The Ness lies just south-east of the Ring of Brodgar, the neolithic stone circle which can be seen as Orkney's version of Stonehenge.

The website of the Ness of Brodgar Trust,, external says it is "without parallel in Atlantic Europe".

The structures already uncovered at the three hectare site were built in waves between roughly 3,500BC and 2,400BC.

The latest work has again been made possible by funding from Time Team, for a new programme they will be making next year.

It will, according to Nick Card, involve "keyhole surgery" to open a small trench to investigate "this anomaly".

He added: "We always said that when we put the trenches to bed, that was the end of the fieldwork.

"But last summer we conducted several types of geophysics and what that has showed up is something quite extraordinary.

"This was the first time this particular form of GPR had been used in Scotland.

"The preliminary results have just been amazing but we still have to get more analysed.

"All of this then needs to be stitched together and we'll create 3D models of the site which will give us a much better understanding of the development of the Ness."

The latest excavation will be open to the public for four weeks in July 2026.

But buildings previously on show prior to 2024 will remain covered up for preservation reasons.

 

[George Lucas]

The Dead Sea Scrolls

 

[Vesperus]

something important went down at that site.

Your mom?

 

[Ser Prize]

Michael Button and Bright Insight gearing up to do videos on this right now I bet!

Gotta be evidence of a pre-Younger Dryas advanced civilization. Hopefully "real" archeologists finding something incontrovertible will be the impetus we need to dig up shit under the Great Pyramid, Sphinx, and the Labyrinth. As well as that hill in Peru or wherever.

Nah, they'll just keep insisting we 200% know history for sure and nothing else is possible. Just like they do whenever Graham Hancock makes a good point.

 

[Vesperus]

Nah, they'll just keep insisting we 200% know history for sure and nothing else is possible. Just like they do whenever Graham Hancock makes a good point.

I'm reasonably sure there's something between Zahi Hawass and Giorgio Tsoukalos that approximates reality. I'm just not sure where it is...

 

[Hitman One]

It's an amazing discovery in Orkney: they found a man who didn't marry his sister.

The male/female ratio in Orkney is skewed something like 40/60 in favour of the chicks. I can attest to the rich pickings of a night out in Kirkwall.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

The structures already uncovered at the three hectare site were built in waves between roughly 3,500BC and 2,400BC.

So most likely they found an ancient Egyptian structure of some sort. There's tons of old stories and legends of ancient Egyptians visiting the British Isles (supposedly Egyptian jewelry were found near Skelling Michael in Ireland back in the 1800's).

If so, we'll probably see the find ignored by the media and reburied by the government, like they did that Roman shipwreck found off Brazil in the 1982.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

night out in Kirkwall.

Spoiler: Your night out, colourised.

 

[Long and sneaky]

So most likely they found an ancient Egyptian structure of some sort. There's tons of old stories and legends of ancient Egyptians visiting the British Isles

That's a pretty long way to go especially with the technology of the times, what would they be doing that they need to go all the way in Orkney instead of just crossing the Med?

that Roman shipwreck found off Brazil in the 1982.

Really? I've never heard about this.
I do vaguely recall something about the Greeks or Phoenicians or something maybe making it to North America to trade, wish I could remember more so I could look it up.

we'll probably see the find ignored by the media and reburied by the government

Why are they like this? What are they hiding? What could possibly be so damaging that they need to engage in coverups like this? Most of it just sounds like interesting but harmless stuff that is forbidden from being acknowledged or studied for no apparent reason.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

So most likely they found an ancient Egyptian structure of some sort. There's tons of old stories and legends of ancient Egyptians visiting the British Isles (supposedly Egyptian jewelry were found near Skelling Michael in Ireland back in the 1800's).

If so, we'll probably see the find ignored by the media and reburied by the government, like they did that Roman shipwreck found off Brazil in the 1982.

No there aren't. The British Isles were a part Neolithic-and-later European trade routes which included Egypt. They were a big exporter of silver and (during the Bronze Age) tin. The ancient world was much more economically connected than people realize. That doesn't mean there were Egyptian settlements in England or that Roman sailors were having out in West Palm Beach.

The "Roman" shipwreck was a hoax. It's easy to look this up.

I do vaguely recall something about the Greeks or Phoenicians or something maybe making it to North America to trade, wish I could remember more so I could look it up.

Absolutely no evidence of this. There is compelling textual evidence that a Phoenician expedition may have circumnavigated Africa, however.

Why are they like this? What are they hiding? What could possibly be so damaging that they need to engage in coverups like this? Most of it just sounds like interesting but harmless stuff that is forbidden from being acknowledged or studied for no apparent reason.

There's no coverup, they just need to confirm that whatever they found is what they theorize it is. While it may be important and redefine timeframes, it's not going to be a spaceship.

Clickbait like this is often a way to secure more funding.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

Really? I've never heard about this.
I do vaguely recall something about the Greeks or Phoenicians or something maybe making it to North America to trade, wish I could remember more so I could look it up.

There's a bay near Rio called the "Bay of Jars" by the locals because divers and fisherman have been dragging up large clay jars from the sea floor for decades. An underwater archeologist named Robert Marx heard of two intact amphora being brought up and in 1982 he went to explore a shallow reef in the bay where he thinks a Roman ship crashed and sunk. He brought up many amphora from the reef and I believe he claimed there to be roughly 2000 jars on the sea bed.

(Archived NYT's article)

He claims the Brazilian navy then stopped his exploration and preceded to dump silt and clay atop the site to bury any artifacts. The navy says this is unfounded and then accused him of smuggling artifacts. The Brazilian government banned Marx from entering Brazil and in 1985 they banned all underwater exploration in Brazil (I don't know if that is still the case or not).

(Second Archived NYT's article on Brazil banning)

Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will (died 2009), the world's leading expert on Roman and Greek amphora, wrote an article back in 2000 about amphora. The last few paragraphs she suddenly notes that she has a fragment of one of Marx's recovered amphora from the bay, and she concludes it is most likely from Morocco circa 200AD, so Roman Empire period.
(Archive Link)


An Italian immigrant to Brazil and diving expert, Americo Santarelli, later published a story in a diving magazine claiming that he had 100 amphora jars made and placed 16 of them in the sea off Brazil's coast to grow barnacles so they'd look old when he brought them up to place in his house as decorations sometime around 1961. But he only recovered 4. He lent a ship to Marx to explore for shipwrecks and supposedly published this story after hearing about the amphora discoveries and felt bad.

This account has generally been used to debunk Marx's finds. However, it doesn't explain the large number of jars in the bay or why an expert in Amphora wouldn't recognize them as modern replicas.

Why are they like this? What are they hiding? What could possibly be so damaging that they need to engage in coverups like this? Most of it just sounds like interesting but harmless stuff that is forbidden from being acknowledged or studied for no apparent reason.

I have long wondered that myself. Within the archeology community, it's usually that the people who control funding and grants are all old people who built a career pushing a particular concept/timeline and anything that would disprove that would effectively make it impossible for them to sell their books and be embarrassing to them.

That's why it took until the old guard died off before the Clovis First nonsense was finally tossed out and sites that predated the Clovis culture were officially admitted to exist and funded for excavation. And now the pre-Clovis advocates are the old guard, pushing back on findings of human settlement that predates their own assumptions. (130,000 year old find, 25,000 year old footprints)

The Smithsonian has been a big source of this. Back in the day, there were two basic theories about human migration: 1, that humans generally never traveled very far from their home lands; and 2, that humans ventured far from home, crossing seas to explore new lands.

The Smithsonian was firmly in support of the first concept and that's why there has always been so much pushback against ideas like Trans-Atlantic travel predating Columbus. People forget that academics didn't support the idea of Vikings reaching the Americas until the mid-1960's, and still pushback on discoveries of Viking artifacts in Massachusetts and elsewhere in America.

Then you have political/religious issues, which probably explains Egyptology's antipathy towards any narrative changes from the official timeline on the Pyramids, and other things. When you are dependent on a Islamic junta to grant you access to your life's work, you probably feel incentivized to tote the junta's official timeline on the history of the culture.

And you even run into racial-based issues, which comes up with anything that touches on Europeans in the Americas before the Asians, Atlantis, or anything against 'Out Of Africa'.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

These niggers haven’t found shit and are just trying to drum up publicity to secure more funding.


As an American I am a little jealous of these Neolithic sites because the fucking Amerindians were incapable of leaving lasting structures so there’s little history here beyond “pile of corpses buried under dirt” east of the Rockies.

The built piles of dirt without bodies as well ( Cahokia , Aztalan ) there are also things like the Choco Canyon civilization that has a lot of structures and kivas . There are also medical wheels and fasting beds dotted around the American south west.

 

[Stoneheart]

Callanish on Lewis is another site where you can get close to the stones, there's several circles around in that area.

well those stone arent that rare in the rest of europe either. best place to touch something ancient neolithic is north europe. plenty of strange stone structures in the low lands, northern germany and denmark. they are just off the road and nobody really cares for them.
the more impressive stuff is in northern france, but those are full of tourists because of Obelix.

 

[Ly Erg]

So most likely they found an ancient Egyptian structure of some sort. There's tons of old stories and legends of ancient Egyptians visiting the British Isles (supposedly Egyptian jewelry were found near Skelling Michael in Ireland back in the 1800's).

If so, we'll probably see the find ignored by the media and reburied by the government, like they did that Roman shipwreck found off Brazil in the 1982.

We wuz pharaohs and shite.

 

[millais]

Maybe they will find a star map to an exoplanet with black mutagenic goo and bald albino giants.

 

[Phalanges Mycologist]

It's probably evidence that people inhabited the site longer than previously believed, or they discovered something very well-intact for how old it is. It could also be evidence of a culture not originally believed to reach that far.

This is most likely what's happened an they have found there was occupation of the site later or earlier than previously known, or they have found a object like a Roman coin or something that was likely brought up from the south as part of a trade network,

The British Isles were a part Neolithic-and-later European trade routes which included Egypt. They were a big exporter of silver and (during the Bronze Age) tin. The ancient world was much more economically connected than people realize.

Very much this, people like to think the Ancient world where all cultures where a monolith an disconnected from each other but that was far from the case an there was an awful lot of trade between different peoples both formal and informal just what was traded was different from today, more raw materials than finished goods, especially on overland routes.

I know there have been Roman coins found at the Chinese end of the Silk Road that where likely brought along because they thought it was neat an to show off "Hey look at these weird coins I have from the other side of the world" I mean people still do that with uncommon money there is a restaurant around where I used to live that had a board of foreign money pinned to it an it had some North Korean bank notes on it.

Just because there was trade doesn't mean there was direct contact either, while it was possible it was extremely unlikely you would have someone go from Orkney to China along the road the journey would have likely been one way and have taken the majority of someone’s life to make the full trip until recently travel was eye wateringly expensive, as the trade routes where not done by a single journey, you'd have someone do A - B then someone else do B - C then again someone else do C - D etc and the goods would have changed along the way, so D might need some copper from A they wouldn’t send a letter saying "Yea send me copper" they would talk to the merchant who'd talk to his guy who did the B - C run who would talk to his guy.

 

[Martian High Command]

They found my stash.

 

[Unfiltered Sunshine]

"I have a girlfriend, and she goes to a different high school. No, you cant have her name. "

 

[UselessRubberKeyboard]

Is this some dumbass Cold War bunker thing? Does that count as ‘contemporary’?

 

[SHITTAHS CLOGGED!]

I have long wondered that myself. Within the archeology community, it's usually that the people who control funding and grants are all old people who built a career pushing a particular concept/timeline and anything that would disprove that would effectively make it impossible for them to sell their books and be embarrassing to them.

Archaeology has stagnated more dramatically than other fields. The Kenneth Kitchens generation so thoroughly locked it down that talented people went elsewhere. Now that generation is keeling over and the field is full of effete, lispy autistic Jeopardy machines making "debunking" TikToks. Important contributions, like the kid who digitally unrolled a Pompeii scroll, come from outside the field and that trend will probably continue.