#ormaig

[thesilicontribesman]

Ormaig Prehistoric Rock Art, Argyll, 14.7.18.

[elephantbitterhead]

When I started planning to visit these stone art sites, I immediately thought of bringing my marbles. The beach by our old flat in Musselburgh -- which I spent countless hours combing -- turned up a truly unreasonable number of marbles. I think many of them were bottle stoppers (something like a Codd-neck bottle, perhaps?); that would explain the single-colored ones and the clay ones. I have no idea where all the cat’s eyes came from -- generations of spiteful children hurling their siblings’ treasures into the sea, maybe. Over 3-ish years of collecting I gathered about 60 of them.

Anyhow, I knew from the outset that the marbles would enjoy visiting the cups & rings. For scale reference, the clay marbles are about shooter size and all the others are your standard guys, ~1/2″ in diameter. These marbles have now lived out their initial terrestrial marble lives, spent who knows how long as citizens of the sea, been hauled back onto land & crammed together to form an involuntary nation in a jar, and then, finally, reached the pinnacle of their round little lives as they sat smugly in 4000-year-old holes while the sun shone down on their frosted faces & their adventure was photographed for posterity.

@thejunesky So yes, as you can see, there are many top-notch fingertip dents there. Those two smaller ring & dot designs in particular are tailor made for touching.

[elephantbitterhead]

Cups & rings at Ormaig -- these richly and vividly decorated slabs were the highlight of our time in Kilmartin. The carvings are thought to date from the Neolithic & Bronze Age periods, which makes them 3000-6000 years old. They were only exposed in the mid-70s (by clearcut logging, I think), so they’re much sharper than many others in the area. We were alone on the entire hike in & had the site to ourselves the whole time we were there. It was amazing to put my hands on these shapes and look out over Loch Craignish & know that I was exactly where someone had been thousands of years ago, still able to see some reasonable approximation of what they saw at the time.