Skara Brae

A stone-built Neolithic settlement on the Bay of Skaill, occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and the most complete Neolithic village in Europe. It was found when a storm stripped the coastal dunes and exposed the structures beneath; ten of them are visible today, with four passageways and the remains of stone furniture and fixtures still in place. The name is layered like Orkney itself. Brae is Scots for a slope, and Skara comes from older forms applied to the grassy mound that covered the buried village. UNESCO lists it within the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.