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'Something over six thousand years ago
the indigenous population of large mammals in Scotland received the
addition of a new exotic species, that wily predator, Man'-thus Stuart
Piggott sets the scene for the arrival of the first man to set foot upon
the soil of Scotland. And from the nameless people of antiquity, the
hunters and gatherers who found their way north in the filth millennium
B.C., this book takes the search for the origins of the Scottish nation
right up to the thirteenth century A.D. But who are the Scots? After
Piggott's first exotic species came the so-called Beaker people, then
the iron-using Celts, and either of these might be the ancestors of the
enigmatic Picts. And what contributions were made by the Irish Scots of
Dalriada, the Britons of Strathclyde, the Angles of Northumbria, the
Norsemen, the Anglo-Normans?
This book brings together the views of ten scholars on subjects on which
they write with authority and, even more important, about which they
care passionately. With each author writing from his individual
standpoint, it expresses varying emphases and opinions, making a lively
approach to the past. The book is eminently readable combining as it
does evocative description with scholarly interpretation. For anyone
interested in Scotland and its people these fascinating studies must go
a long way towards answering the question: Who are the Scots?
The illustration on the front cover is from
the Invergowrie Stone held in the National Museum of Antiquities,
Edinburgh. It shows a Pict drinking or is it a Scot?
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