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Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

orkneyjar.com

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Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#21

Post by [deleted] »

ajlburke wrote: post #20
ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

I spent a lot of time in the guild hall there recruiting members to my party between trips to the dungeon[1] :-). Definitely on a list of interesting places to visit, and it amazes me that places like this were occupied for 600 years and then abandoned long before what I think of as ancient times. How did folks develop the techniques for building these sorts of structures? Some sort of stone age think tank? It is rea…

Skara Brae also features in some of the Ultima games. Supposedly both companies hired the same consultant who provided some of the same naming ideas to both customers - oops!

[deleted]

Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#22

Post by shmerl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

I spent a lot of time in the guild hall there recruiting members to my party between trips to the dungeon[1] :-). Definitely on a list of interesting places to visit, and it amazes me that places like this were occupied for 600 years and then abandoned long before what I think of as ancient times. How did folks develop the techniques for building these sorts of structures? Some sort of stone age think tank? It is rea…

I was playing The Bard's Tale 1 remastered[1] just recently (using Wine+dxvk, since Linux version is not out yet) since I got it as a backer reward for The Bard's Tale IV.

Quite a pity inXile was bought by Microsoft.

1. https://www.gog.com/game/the_bards_tale_trilogy

Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#24

Post by anadem »

meritt wrote: post #14

Another really amazing spot on Orkney is Maeshowe, it's a neolithic cairn (from ~3000 BC) but Vikings in the 12th century looted and desecrated it with a bunch of runic graffiti [1]. It's really cool to experience two facets of history in the same location but millennia apart. [1] http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm

There's some wonderful prehistory in the Orkneys. When I was a little kid (1950) Skara Brae was just open to run around; my sis played house.

Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#25

Post by sevensor »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

I spent a lot of time in the guild hall there recruiting members to my party between trips to the dungeon[1] :-). Definitely on a list of interesting places to visit, and it amazes me that places like this were occupied for 600 years and then abandoned long before what I think of as ancient times. How did folks develop the techniques for building these sorts of structures? Some sort of stone age think tank? It is rea…

I loved Bard's Tale up until I completely ruined it for myself by opening my saves up with a hex editor (the DEBUG command in DOS). The format was really simple, and I quickly figured out how to max out everything. I never finished the game, it wasn't fun after that, but I went on to learn x86 assembly language. So not a total loss.

Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#26

Post by NamTaf »

ajlburke wrote: post #20
ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

I spent a lot of time in the guild hall there recruiting members to my party between trips to the dungeon[1] :-). Definitely on a list of interesting places to visit, and it amazes me that places like this were occupied for 600 years and then abandoned long before what I think of as ancient times. How did folks develop the techniques for building these sorts of structures? Some sort of stone age think tank? It is rea…

Skara Brae also features in some of the Ultima games. Supposedly both companies hired the same consultant who provided some of the same naming ideas to both customers - oops!

Yup, my long history of playing Ultima and in particular UO was what made me go 'oh, so THAT'S where they got the name!'. It's nice to see how these fantasy worlds tie back to our own in inspiration.

Re: Skara Brae – Discovery and Excavation of Orkney's finest Neolithic Settlement

#28

Post by Jaruzel »

zaxquit wrote: post #27

Lived in orkney since I was born, 19 years ago, it's amazing how much we don't appreciate what's outside our doors around Orkney all the time :-)

I've been visiting my in-laws (who live just outside of Kirkwall in St Ola) almost twice a year for 20 years now, and I still haven't become used to how lovely Orkney is. Even got married in Kirkwall. There's a high possibility we'll retire back there when the time comes.
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