The Bronze Age

Bronze Age in Ancient Scotland

Archeologists believe that new people, called the Beaker people after their most common archealogical product, moved to the Isles around 2500 BC bringing their metalworking skills and culture with them. This was a peaceful influx, a more technologically advanced society influencing and dominating the less advanced. However, the Beaker people embraced wholeheartedly the notion of stone circles and they are the ones who perfected the art. So cultural exchange worked both ways.

Scottish culture changed dramatically with the advent of metalworking. Learning to smelt gold and copper, and later to combine copper and tin into sturdy bronze, opened broad new vistas in trade, the arts, accumulation of wealth, and warfare. All of these produced commensurate changes in class structure and ancient society. Gold and copper were available in Scotland, but the tin had to come from Cornwall, increasing trade traffic all around the Isles.

With metalworking, the days of bonking someone over the head with a club or sailing a stone at them were over. Swords and shields, dirks, daggers and spearheads - all beautifully crafted and carved - and, of course, expensive. They would belong to the man who could get them and hold them, and the age of warrior aristocracy began. Stone age cairns held many people, but the Beaker people buried their aristocracy alone, complete with artifacts and goods for the journey ahead.

While all these changes were taking place in ancient Scotland, a new people were spreading across the face of Europe. Coming from the steppes of southeast Asia, as had so many before them, they made great use of horses to overcome and subdue. By 700 BC, they had reached England and their influence spread until their culture dominated the British Isles. They were the Celts.

From heartoscotland.com