Stone Me
Investigating Scotland’s oldest places
Did you know that there is a cosmic lightshow put on by a massive moon that only happens once every 18.6 years at a 5,000 year old holy place at the north west tip of Scotland’s most remote western island? Or that a farmer’s plough striking a stone just 20 years led to ancient finds that have caused the country’s most ancient history to be rewritten?
Matthew Magee didn’t, until he got on his bike and rode (and sailed, and travelled by train) to eight of Scotland’s most glamorous, exciting and important neolithic sites to interview experts on the secrets of our oldest places.
From the centre of cities to the remotest tips of Europe, standing stones are a brooding reminder of our ancient selves. You’ve walked past them on a country stroll, you’ve probably reached out and touched them. You’ve almost certainly wondered: who put them there? And what do they mean?
Matthew decided to try to answer those questions and more - and you can join him on his journey in Stone Me, a podcast investigating Scotland’s oldest places.
Uncovering the secrets of life 5,000 years ago is an exercise in imagination, diligence, skill and perseverance. Matthew talks to the archaeologists who have in some cases poured decades of their lives into patches of earth that were sacred to our ancestors.
Who invented the stone circle? How were they used? What do the ancient abstract shapes carved into the bedrock of Scotland mean? And what is it like to walk on this hallowed ground now, thousands of years later at long-abandoned places that were once the centre of an ancient culture?
Find out in Stone Me.
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Matthew Magee
Matthew Magee is a former newspaper journalist turned content marketer who spends a lot of his time on his bike cycling the lanes and deserted back roads of Scotland. He would come across solo standing stones, or fragments of them, and sometimes whole stone circles and would wonder: who put them there? What do they mean?
The questions nagged and nagged at him and he found himself almost subconsciously planning trips and routes that would take him to places where almost-forgotten stones lay.
He wanted to know more, and thought other people might too, so he planned a series of trips travelling only by bike, boat and train, to interview each site’s leading expert at the site.
He had the time of his life and is already planning another series.
To contact the show