Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History

Scotland stirs strong emotions in many people, mostly related to popular images of mist-shrouded islands, bleak landscapes, clans, castles and the like. Less common is awareness about how the land was formed, how people began to inhabit it, and why the country is the way it is today, including the origins of its name.

Before Scotland is like a time machine, with Alistair Moffat taking the reader back to before the Ice Age. He explains what happened to cover the region with glaciers and snow, how that affected life, and what took place after that. In many cases, he touches on natural events that occurred in earlier epochs but threaten us again today: global warming, the eruption of volcanoes, disruptive earthquakes, and more. For instance, it is believed a major earthquake caused a land bridge that once existed between Britain and the continent of Europe to disappear beneath what is now the North Sea. Dogger Bank, the shallow water that exists today off Britain’s north-east coast, recalls an adjacent and now submerged area called Doggerland.

Bringing Ancient Scotland to Life

Perhaps the author’s career as a television producer and writer of several other books on northern history contribute to making the content vivid and not at all dry. The book is clearly well researched and Moffat demonstrates a deep knowledge of the subject. The style may reflect something of ancient Norse and Celtic storytelling associated with this part of the world, coupled with thoroughly modern findings. The pages are densely but not indigestibly packed with ideas, facts and descriptions.

Moffat also succeeds in exploding a few myths and misconceptions, and not just about Scotland. For example, Britain is not an amalgam of many different immigrations or invasions. DNA analysis reveals the population’s gene source is surprisingly small, indicating that people from different origins did not mix all that much. In contrast, scientific studies also reveal that people migrated some 7,000 to 8,000 years ago from the region surrounding the Euphrates in what is now Iraq and ended up in places like western Britain, Ireland, Galloway and the Hebridean islands.

The chapters deal with evolutions of the land, names, people, dwellings and towns, occupations and conflicts. Of interest is that the author draws on archaeological discoveries in other parts of Britain – buildings, burials, communities and individuals – and compares these to Scotland. The chapter covering the activities of the Romans is especially rich in detail, partly because they were so good at documenting information, both in literature and military records that have survived. 

Being constructively critical, there are no footnotes or similar references, but the book seems aimed more at readers wanting to be well informed, rather than those requiring an academic text. Reference notes tend to slow reading progress and Before Scotland is a bit like a thriller – it has a good pace and you want to keep reading about what comes next. 

Nearly three pages of bibliography make up for the point above. In any case, facts and statements are qualified, with any speculative comment identified as such. There is also an 11-page index, always a good sign of how useful a book can be as a source of information. Providing visual contrast, a feature of the book is the use of boxed texts inserted on many pages, explaining points or elaborating on details related to topics on the page.

On the graphic side, I would have liked to have seen more diagrams and drawings illustrating ideas and things that are easier to quickly comprehend pictorially. To balance that, there are over 20 colour photographs showing remains of monuments, earth works and early homes. The lack of diagrams does not detract from the excellent value of the work, but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

A Scottish provenance is not an essential qualification to reading this book: it will appeal to the English, and has relevance to the inhabitants of Wales, Ireland and Europe in general. In short, it would make informative reading for anyone anywhere in the world with an interest in how a nation was shaped by natural and historic events, the movement of people, and the important effect of their cultural habits and beliefs. 

Reviewer: Mark Mitchell

Growing up in Cornwall in a world of Celtic reminders and disused tin mines, and later in Wiltshire with ancient barrows and Roman remains, Mark Mitchell gained a keen sense of history. Today, he writes about technology but retains an abiding curiosity about past events, people and all their legacies.