Archaeologists find 'world's oldest calendar' in Aberdeenshire field

Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of what could be the world's oldest calendar in an Aberdeenshire field.

New analysis of a group of 12 pits excavated at Warren Field near Crathes Castle shows they appear to mimic the phases of the moon to track lunar months over the course of a year.

The first formal time-measuring devices were thought to have been created in Mesopotamia about 5000 years ago. But experts say the pit system could predate those discoveries by another five millennia.

The Mesolithic monument is likely to have been created by hunter-gatherer societies nearly 10,000 years ago. It was excavated between 2004-06 and recently analysed by a team led by the University of Birmingham.

They found the monument also aligns on the Midwinter sunrise, which researchers say would provide an annual astronomic correction to maintain the link between the passage of time indicated by the moon, the solar year and the seasons.

The project was led by Vince Gaffney, professor of landscape archaeology at the University of Birmingham.

He said: "The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly 5000 years before the first formal calendars known in the near east.


Dr Richard Bates, from the University of St Andrews, said the pit monument provided new evidence of the sophistication of societies in early Mesolithic Scotland.

"This is the earliest example of such a structure and there is no known comparable site in Britain or Europe for several thousands of years after the monument at Warren Fields was constructed," he said.

The pit site was first discovered when unusual crop markings were noticed during an aerial survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

It lies on the National Trust for Scotland's Crathes Castle estate and was excavated by the trust and Murray Archaeological Services.

Dr Shannon Fraser, the trust's archaeologist for eastern Scotland, said: "This is a remarkable monument which is so far unique in Britain.


The research has been published in the journal Internet Archaeology.

People who read this story also read