I showed you my pictures of Skara Brae, but another great archaeological site I saw on my trip to Orkney was the stone circle called the Ring of Brodgar. This is located nearby:
But unlike Skara Brae it’s not on the west shore, on the Norwegian Sea. Instead, it’s on a small isthmus between the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray—a natural point for travelers to pass:
Most of the megalithic sites on the British Isles do not contain stone circles. Three notable exceptions are Avebury, Stonehenge and the Ring of Brodgar. Of these, the Ring of Brodgar is the northernmost—and also the most perfect circle.
It’s proved difficult to date this monument, but it’s generally thought to have been built between 2500 BC and 2000 BC. If so, it’s the last of the great Neolithic monuments built in this region, which is called the Ness of Brodgar. The homes of Skara Brae, for comparison, were built from about 3180 BC to 2500 BC.
The Ring of Brodgar is about 100 meters in diameter. The ring originally had about 60 stones, but only 27 are still standing now. These stones are surrounded by a circular ditch dug into the sandstone bedrock below. Nowadays you’re not allowed to cross this ditch.
As we approached the Ring of Brodgar it was chilly, windy, cloudy and a bit misty. Then it cleared up for a while. Then it started to rain. It was a mysterious and evocative experience, which set me to wondering about the ancient people who made this ring of stones.
Why did they build it? Nobody knows.
Azimuth 
There is a website on a dig on the other side of the Ness (https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/category/news/)
There was an excellent programme (in French) made on the dig by ARTE, in a series with Peter Eckhout,(https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ex0wc).
Cool—I’ll check it out. I visited this dig and will do an article on it someday. My pictures of that dig are less spectacular since it amounts to a bunch of pits that archaeologists are working on, full of buckets, tarpaulins and such. But it seems to be shedding a lot of light on the culture of this time and place.
We found it shocking that the UK government doesn’t fund any of this archaeological research. It’s all funded by donations.
On a loosely related note, Tim Porter pointed out this article:
• Libby Brooks, Archaeologists uncover complete Neolithic cursus on the Isle of Arran, The Guardian, 4 September 2023.
It’s really big!
Human structures from 2000+ BC kind of take my breath away. We’ve been doing entropy reduction like this a very long time!