Free Republic

Last year, when winter storms revealed a previously-unknown shipwreck on a beach on Sanday Island, one of the Orkney Islands, it launched an investigation by archaeologists and historians to uncover the mysterious vessel's identity. The Herald Scotland reports that researchers from Wessex Archaeology, Dendrochronicle, Historic Environment Scotland, and other local institutions recently tracked down the ship's origins, believing the wreck to be that of the Earl of Chatham, a 500-ton whaling ship that sank in March 1788. Before it was known by that name, however, it was formerly the HMS Hind, a ship with many years of service in the...

Two polished stone balls shaped about 5,500 years ago – linked to a mysterious practice almost unique to Neolithic Britain – have been discovered in an ancient tomb on the island of Sanday, in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland. Hundreds of similar stone balls, each about the size of a baseball, have been found at Neolithic sites mainly in Scotland and the Orkney Islands, but also in England, Ireland, and Norway, Live Science previously reported. Some are ornately carved – such as the famous Towie ball discovered in northeast Scotland in 1860 – but others are studded with...