What bothers me about modern people is that when they look at building projects from the past they think of every thing that could possibly explain how it was built. Aliens,magic, what ever, except common sense and experimentation with tools and techniques. The majority of the measurement tools throughout all time is string and gravity.

All the best to The Caithness Broch project, and my thanks to the History Hit team for this great video! 🌟👍

Too big for two men? LOL. in Uni a students car collapsed into a ditch in a heavy rain, he called a tow. I looked about and we had >10 men sitting about. We went outside and lifted his car out of the ditch. Modern people seriously underestimate the strength of large groups of people working together.

They remind me a bit of the Sardinian Nuraghe structures, which where used as fortresses or residences or storehouses (nobody really knows). But the shape of these Brochs look quite similair. It is also interesting that they are both build long ago; brochs roughly since 600 BC and Nuraghes roughly since 2000 BC until roughly 700 BC.

These construction techniques look similar to those in the construction of the Great Zimbabwe remains. Also South Africa has what seems to have been thousands of stone circular wall remnants scattered across the landscape. I had never hear of a Broch till I stumbled upon this video.

There are many, many of these in the North. Some easy to find, some not so much. There's hundreds that are sadly just a pile of stones, but some are in amazing condition. Its a real joy for me to find these!

I see Dundornalilla there, or Dundornagail as you may know it. Thats where I'm from. I wrote a 40 page paper on Brochs in 1984, when I was 16. And another on souterrains. There's a great broch in Mousa, in Shetland, almost intact. Thanks for the video.

Very very interesting! i've never heard abouy Brochs..they look similar to Sardinian's Nuragic structures, built 3000-3500 years ago and still shrouded in mystery

Tristan is an excellent presenter. I’ve said it before, will say it again his “The Ancients” podcast is superb! 🍸

Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 has a very fascinating and strong 💪 history 🏰 ☦️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿✝️ 📜

To the person who did the intro, seriously this was dope. Wasnt expecting it in the history video at all but hope to see it more often!

They do realize that people have built all our great monuments by HAND right? Check the Tanjavur Periyakovil - they lifted a sculpted 80 ton block to the top of the worlds largest religious tower or Gopuram in Tamil by hand. People can do incredible things when they put their minds, hearts and wallets into it.

I love these reconstruction projects. I visited a reconstruction of a crannog in Scotland. (Burned down recently) and it was fascinating.

5:56 i thought he was about to say "The stones in iron age times were a lot heavier"

Fascinating! Had never heard of these. Every day I learn something new is a good day, so Thank you! Greets from the Netherlands 🌷, T.

Thank you so much for this very interesting documentary video. I want to learn much more about.

Regarding Building With Large Stones: Its also quite logical that wood & Rope Bock and Tackle or basic crane like device could have been used instead of ramps so that multiple people or an animal could be used (like an ox) to haul such up. Since wood & rope rot away there would not be any evidence left behind of this but there is no reason to assume that an iron age culture would not have had them since they were known to the Bronze Age cultures of Greece, Egypt, Rome etc.

Fascinating! I wonder, we don't see this kind of building in Scandinavia, might it have something to do with the abundance of wood here and perhaps a lack of it in Scotland?

6:08 "they must have used some sort of method to lift the heavy stones." Really got to the bottom of that one. Brilliant.

Fascinating stuff,! 👍

Very interesting as always. Although you say Broch's are unique to Scotland they do resemble the Nuraghe in Sardinia.

"What are these Mysterious Prehistoric Towers in Scotland?" Haggis factories.

Love your work 👍

Croft houses on the west coast of Scotland even up to the middle of the last century were community built. Not all members were “qualified” tradesmen.

I’m hooked on the Broch culture. I’m in the process of building a Broch beehive.

It would be cool for them to build an entire broch with iron age techniques and experimental archeology. Think of Guedelon Castle in France, but with a broch. Not only educational but a potential tourist attraction.

Great video thanks

I hope that the community finnishes this of and could be an quite an attraction for the area a authentic reconstruction .🤩👍

How bloody interesting! TY 🏯🏰⛰

Hope they get to build a full sized broch again, amazing project!

What a cool project. I know this is a year old. I wonder how things are coming along? Thanks for sharing this.

Thank you!🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

It's not "an archaic looking spirit level". It's a rather normal plumb level.

Must have had a fireplace or kitchen area. Don’t see a chimney in the graphics. Very interesting video and rundown, thanks

The foundation layout of the last Broch in the film looks similar to the ancient sites found in South Africa. Refer to Michael Tellinger films.

Can we get videos like this on Crannogs. And Other Stone Structure in Scotland from prehistory to pre industrial times.

There seems to be a lot of stuff going on in Orkney and Shetland in the late neolithic.

That was so interesting! I wonder why lots of them were near the sea? I know the shores diminished a lot but still

2:09 That should be "Jamb", not "Jam". As per Wikipedia "A doorjamb, door jamb (also sometimes doorpost) is the vertical portion of the door frame onto which a door is secured."

Quite Excellent

Its truly amazing how these early Scottish civilisations (first century BC) applied basic geometry to their massive constructions. By comparison the similar Great Zimbabwe in Africa was only constructed in the 11th Century AC.

My home is in The Ozark Mountains in The US. That is significant because not only are those mountains infamous for the amount of rock (sandstone) you have to shift to build nearly anything, but also for the Scottish and Irish ancestry of its longtime inhabitants. Dry stone structures were not uncommon, especially as fences around fields, which were made from the stone cleared from that field. There is also a style of house exterior that uses the linear splits in a vertical configuration, albeit with the aid of concrete for mortar. Our first house was 4 large rooms that set into the hill at the back which meant the front of the house set about 4 or 5 feet above the ground due to its slope. Dad used stacked rock pillars under the floor to brace it. He did not make an effort to shape or split the rocks, just used ones that were flattish. Having experienced that and many other stone DIYs in the family and small surrounding community, I completely understand why so few brochs still stand. Not only because not everyone is a master Mason, but I believe that "...good enough for now-we'll fix that later..." would have been most of my ancestors' mantra!

Thank you excellent. I may subscribe. These buildings are very similar to the towers of the almost concurrent Nuragic civilization un Sardignia.

Incredible

I quite enjoyed the music in this episode. Very groovy, found myself involuntarily dancing a wee bit. Also the presenter looks like he could be Jude Law's older brother who got into history instead of acting.

I have been in the Mousa Broch, a wonder of engineering.

I stopped to see one of these I spotted when touring Britain in 1996, about 25 km North of Tain, called Cairn Liath. I found it very interesting, but sadly only about 3m of wall height remained. At approx 0AD, older than anything here in NZ!

i saw those up in north scotland very impressive

People in the ancient world were no doubt smarter, healthier, and stronger than we are. There was no option to be lazy. You had no choice but to figure it out, solve your problems, and work...or perish. They also had plenty of time to use their brains, to contemplate, to consider. No TV, no internet to distract, no entertainment venues, etc. their brains probably worked much better than ours do. The stakes were high for them all the time, they couldn’t afford to get it wrong.

08:40, the method of maintaining the circular structure looks like the origin of Maypole dancing.

Reminds me the Battanian style of Lord hall in Bannerlord. The interior style looks alike a cave

amazing

Archeologists are very good at coming upwith theories. What does annoy me at times is that they move in tight groups, and often miss the obvious. I like this idea that Broch builders made themselves a kit of spirit levels. They seem to ignore that people with lifetime skills developed an " eye" for the job. Evidence of this can be seen in boat and shipbuilding, complex curves and a perfect symmetry were created with a well developed line of sight

It is surprising the stone was not reused over the years

It seems incredibly similar to the ones we can find in Sardinia and Azores.

Thanks for this interesting history lesson. Never been to Scotland but have deep roots there.

Key to lifting heavy stones is to keep your feet close together and lift with your back

If you are serious about learning more about Brochs then check out the Caithness Broch Project

Thanks from Belgium .

It'd be so lovely to have full-size replicas made of these amazing settlements. Also, there are so many of the Scottish Castles which should be refurbished with the woodworks without which we usually get a wrong impression of what almost all of them really looked like. (A-frames were used by many iron age cultures to lift stones high with few people. but many history folk seem to bypass this obvious and simple, but very very ancient means of erecting, and lifting stones.) (Did you know the stone humanoids at Rapanui (Easter Island) were ''walked'' to their destinations? The bottoms of each statue were designed as it transpires, so that a small group of people could tilt them side to side/back to front,. in a rhythmic, tilting manner, so that the statues would ''walk'' to their end point. So, the old legends about the ''giants' 'walking' there were not quite fables at all.)

Saw the thumnail. Looks like an obvious castle design to me. hope i could help.

I thought they were Nuragic towers from the thumbnail.

The foundation remnants look like the stone circles in South Africa that Tellinger talks about.

Reminds me of the ones in Corsica.

I hate to pick nits, but it's door "jamb" not "jam".

What do you think of Mousa in Shetland?

Brochs are very elegant structures but I have a question. If they were multi-storey and without openings apart from the entrance-way, how did they get light and fresh air into the central rooms?

The things you can do without spending time watching TV, or on the internet. Or reading even.😉

It now appears that long before there was much cultural centering down south around Stonehenge and similar centres, that the far North West and North Eastern parts of Scotland held an older culture which slowly , then suddenl;y migrated southerly to eventually end up as Stonehenge culture. Niel Oliver does an excellent BBC archaeology show on it, and focused upon, in particular, and still very much on-going so far as the current research goes, around the Ness of brodgar site not too far from the Stones. It is AMAZING. Especially now that well researched artistic impressions of it's buiidings and structures are coming to light. And shows a similar grasp of stone work as the, later, brochs did, and appears to show it as a culture which may have seeded the coming 'british' neolithic age, spreading as it did southerly. It is still not exactly clear why this culture suddenly stopped. Whether voluntary, or perhaps forced due to water-level changes? Who knows yet? .). It may be possible the later 'Pictish' peoples may have some descendency from them. We shall see. But we don't really quite know. So much of trhe Picts histories and tales were wiped out by Scots and Britons/Celts A recreation of how the main settlement may have appeared: i0.wp.com/www.scottishportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/flk9514892853.jpg?ssl=1 there seems to also be a special religious stone arrangement very nearby too. The BBC Niel Oliver show should give you the basic footing on this one, and there will be plenty of up-to-date findings and interpretations if you simply websearch ''Ness Of brodgar 2024'' Remember, these sites pre-date stonehenge, and the pyramids! WOW!

Fun thought. We're older ages before us as interested in what came before? Could some archeological confusion come from previous eras emulating their predecessors as we do?

Is there much of a difference between these and the mot and bailey layout?

But what if Tristan Hughes isn’t handy? Don’t get me wrong, I *love* building brochs with Tristan, but don’t you think we should learn to build them _without_ him? Just in case?

Interesting to see how my ancestors lived prehistory.

Interesting, they are a bit further north than where I'm from, but I find them fascinating. Congratulations to the English chap for not renaming them Broks.

Have you seen in comparison the so called Nuragic structures situated in Sardinia, possibly built in the same period ?

When you dig up fresh sand stone that has moisture, it is easily shaped.

That last structure near the ocean with all the convoluted rooms going nowhere resemble the buried and semi-buried, ancient, stone "corrals" located by the 100s of thousands in South Africa generate strange energies.

it's pretty well known that Iron age Britain was not only in contact with the rest of Europe but also the Greek / Hellenistic world. The Greeks understood and used pulleys, gearing, cranes etc. So no reason to assume they didn't here.

House Castle 🏰

These look similar to Zimbabwe ruins. Very similar stone colour and “brick” size and shape. Very interesting similar build in Scotland and in Zimbabwe. Thousands of of years old. Mystery

Didn't they have double walls with an insulation cavity, so the wind and rain could get through the first wall but would not pass the cavity to reach the second wall? {:o:O:}

Caithness Broch Project sounds like an indie band lol

I like to imagine these towers were just High land hot boxes.

Much like the later "KEEPS" still seen in some town centers especially in Italy......Werer actually "safe houses" for the towns people...... Some Castles also had Keeps....

It's where they used to keep Haggis to harvest their eggs, duh.

You would be out of the wind inside. That would be gold.

0:53 Video Title: What are these Mysterious "Prehistoric" Towers in Scotland?

In the thumbnail, it looks like a GRAIN-BIN. 😉

The word " Brochs" sounds very similar to the german word "Burg" (fortified site). I wonder if there is any connection.

That design is very similar to how they lookin Ethiopia as well

How is anything newer than the Egyptian Dynasties classed as "Pre-History"? Pre-history is usually referencing a period of time BEFORE writing was created.

some remind me about sardinian ruraghe

They were obviously built as dinosaur forts, to defend velociraptors from larger predators. Around them would be general living spaces where they might dry meat from their prey to preserve it. Often they butchered their food using their claws alone. Leathers made by velociraptors preserved telltale scratches from the tip of their largest claws, which they used to scrape the subcutaneous fats off the skins.

Love the lady's scottish accent. Somewhat Glaswegian??

You'd put those slabs on timber beams and loft them up. You wouldn't build a ramp to get them up. Two brickys could get that up there without any tools

I am just always happy to see anything built long ago that some jackhole doesn't automatically say was either a temple or an observatory. Look, three stones stacked on top of each other, yep....must be the remains of a temple. Look, if you look up in the sky you will find there is at least one star in alignment with it....Eureka.....we know the whole story.

Yeah, build a carpark!

They made a circle with a post and line. - no sh*t !

I do not know why we nowadays can only think of darn ramps to get heavy stones moving. Didn't the rapa nui teach us that there are much better ways than ramps and rollers?

these are Nurages, has anybody done a study onthe similarities of the two structures?