Duncan Harley

Scattered across the Aberdeenshire hill-tops are a series of vitrified forts dating back to the Iron Age. While archaeologists struggle to understand the method of construction many oddball theories as to their origins abound. Supporters of the Ancient Astronauts theory believe that the vitrified ruins provide irrefutable evidence that death-rays created by superior outer space beings were used in ancient times to melt granite to form the defensive structures. Others believe that the fusion of solid rock was caused by bonfires lit as part of a religious ceremony or alternatively that fierce attacks by enemy tribes resulted in huge fires which caused the very rocks to melt. Detractors view the probability of the hill-top forts at Dunnideer or Tap o’ Noth remaining on fire long enough melt rock as unlikely commenting that this would have been “as near as the European Iron Age got to Las Vegas lit against the Nevada desert”. In an effort to solve the mystery, a full scale combu...