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The mysterious islands built by man in Scotland are thousands of years older than we thought.
The stone structures are found in lochs across the country and were probably built by the ancient British as sacred places for meals and funerals.
A member of the prehistoric tribe rolled blocks weighing up to 25 pounds in the water to form short platforms that you can still see today – although many are now covered with 39, trees and other plants.
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Hundreds of monuments, known as crannogs, have been discovered so far and, for decades, experts speculate that they were built in the Iron Age, around 800 BC. .
But a new study reveals that at least some of the islets are much older, dating back to around 3,700 BC.
This makes the crannogs older than Stonehenge, which Neolithic men began to build in Wiltshire 700 years later.
Scientists have found Neolithic pots in Crannogs in lochs around the Outer Hebrides. They show that some crannogs are up to 5,500 years old. Scientists believe that the inhabitants have used the islets for thousands of years before abandoning them a few centuries ago.
"They would have required a huge investment of manpower to build and will probably remain important places for a long time," said Dr. Duncan Garrow of the University of Reading.
"Such islets may well have represented substantial symbols for and the communities that built them.
"These islets could also have been seen as special places, their aquatic environment creating a separation from everyday life."
Crannogs are often built of stone and wood and over 600 of them survive today.
They look just above the water in the lochs, especially along the west coast of Scotland and on the Outer Hebrides Islands, off the coast northwest of the continent.
Dr. Garrow is associated with former Navy diver Chris Murray to conduct his research.
In 2012, Murray discovered a trove of well-preserved Neolithic pottery while diving into a crannog in the Outer Hebrides.
After the discovery, he teamed up with Dr. Garrow and found hundreds of Neolithic pots around four other crannogs in the area.
A radiocarbon dating suggests that the ancient British intentionally placed objects around the structures about 5,500 years ago.
It is still unclear to what sites were used, but experts believe that it was a privileged place for social gatherings, ritual feasts or funeral sites.
The study was published in the journal Antiquity.
This story originally appeared in The Sun.
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