The Grey Cairns of Camster

MThM2S blog readers know all the stats on Whaligoe steps, but Camster Cairns is right up the road.  The cairns are these really amazing, can't-wrap-your-mind-around old pile of stones that are actually these carefully crafted structures that were probably used for rituals and maybe burials like 5000 years ago. 


The cool thing is you can actually crawl in them and everyone did, except for mom, and she had a pass.

Charles goes first - he was the youngest!

Once you crawl in this narrow little passage, there is a room with a skylight.  From the outside the cairns really do look like a random pile of stones, but from the inside you can see that they are engineered with large carefully placed rocks at the base and entrance to hold up the tunnel, entrance and room.  There was a long house with two separate rooms and a single cairn.

Long Cairn - you can just make out little passages on the right - they look square because of the sign on the gate

They found human bones and animal bones in the tunnels, and the cairns rooms and rock piles, but generally we have no idea why they spent some much care on the structures - there use or significance.  But you have to imagine that they are important or why would they go to all of the effort.

Inside the single round cairn

We all had fairly deep discussions about the cairns and Skara Brae, which we saw on Orkney.  The general topic of discussion was, 'damn, I thought they'd be too busy feeding themselves to make these really complicated structure, stone circles and homes.'  


Dave said it best when he said, 'I just can't relate to this...'