An Amateur Archaeologist Found a 1,000-Year-Old Pictish Ring With Incredible Implications
- A retired volunteer unearthed a rare 1,000-year-old Pictish ring during excavations in Scotland.
- The ring is one of the few Pictish rings ever discovered and offers insights into the Pictish kingdom’s history.
- The find sheds light on the Picts, a powerful group who defended Scotland from invaders and mysteriously vanished by the end of the first millennium.
A “remarkable” ring dating back at least a millennium was recently unearthed near the Scottish shore. And it wasn’t some seasoned archeologist who made the find, but rather, a self-described “enthusiastic volunteer” who uncovered this ancient piece of jewelry.
The Picts, called Picti by the Romans from the Latin for “Painted Ones,” were northern tribes who made up the largest kingdom in Dark Age Scotland, per the BBC. Noteworthy warriors, the Picts held back invasion attempts by not just the Romans, but also the Angles, the latter during the famous Battle of Dun Nechtain.
“If the Picts had lost,” the BBC wrote of the ferocious fight against the Northumbrian Angle invaders, “Scotland might never have existed.” However, in spite of their military might, the Picts would “disappear from history by the end of the first millennium,” with the BBC noting that they were “swallowed whole by the history of another group, the Gaels.
An Amateur Archaeologist Found a 1,000-Year-Old Ring With Incredible Implications |
