edinburgh26
edinburgh26
100 BC
Prehistoric Man on the Rock



The Rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands was formed 70 million years ago, during a period of violent volcanic activity. In the series of Ice Ages that followed, mighty glaciers ground away the softer stone, leaving behind the hard basalt core of the Rock. The debris was left as a sloping tail, down which the Royal Mile runs today.



The first people to see the Rock were probably the hunters who appeared in the region nine thousand years ago. Recent archaeological excavations here in the castle have uncovered evidence that Bronze-Age man was living on the rock as long as 850 BC.



Two thousand years ago, during the Iron Age, the Rock was a busy hill-fort settlement of the Votandini tribe. In the first century AD, the tribesman and women watched from these heights as the Roman Legions marched by, on their way to do battle in the Highlands.