GENERAL EFFECTS 31 



appearance of domestic animals in Scotland must rest upon 

 detailed investigations on the mainland, it seems to me that 

 the evidence afforded by Oronsay cannot be ignored, for ex- 

 cavations by Mr Symington Grieve in the neighbouring and 

 contiguous island of Colonsay have shown that at an early 

 period Sheep and Oxen were familiar to the inhabitants. 

 Yet remains of Oxen are absent from the oldest deposit in 

 Colonsay. (See Table, p. 33.) 



The mainland yields scanty evidences of the status of 

 the animals of early Neolithic times, but here also the 

 indications are against the presence of domestic stock. 

 Antlers of Red Deer, dressed by man, have been found 

 associated with stranded Whales in the Carse of Stirling and 

 near Kincardine-on-Forth, but no implement manufactured 

 from a bone of any domestic animal has been recovered. 

 In the upper bone layer of the Bone Cave of Allt nan 

 Uamh, near Inchnadamph, Sutherlandshire, Dr Peach and 

 Dr Home found traces of man's presence, in burnt stones, 

 hearths, burnt and split bones, and sawn antlers of Reindeer. 

 In the same deposit with these were remains of many wild 

 animals including Red Deer and Reindeer, but no trace of 

 domestic animals. I mention Deer in particular because, if 

 early Neolithic man could catch these swift and wary animals 

 for food, there is little likelihood that domestic animals, had 

 they been known, would have escaped. Similar testimony may 

 be gathered from some of the earliest kitchen-middens. In the 

 Bone Cave at Duntroon, Argyllshire, in an extensive shell- 

 mound buried 1 2 feet below the surface on the promontory of 

 Stannergate near Dundee, and in a kitchen-midden found at 

 a depth of 4 feet near the North Sutor, Cromarty, remains of 

 Red Deer have been found, associated in the last case with 

 antlers of Roe Deer, but in no case with traces of domestic 

 animals. The food refuse in the places mentioned, which have 

 been chosen in widely separated areas, represent the accumu- 

 lations of long ages of human occupation, and it seems fair to 

 suppose that had domestic animals been known, some relics of 

 their existence could scarcely have avoided a last resting-place 

 in the kitchen-midden. The absence of such evidences is the 

 more striking when it is recalled that there are not wanting in 

 the same neighbourhoods similar but later deposits yielding 

 abundant proof of the presence of many domestic creatures. 



That the people of the later Neolithic period were well 



