During the last glaciation the sky sucked up the sea, whose waters fell as
snow. Scotland was covered by an ice mass. Ocean levels dropped well below those
of today, revealing land which is below water. After 13,500 BC, the offshore
plains of west Lewis were deluged as the world warmed up. Through all the time
people have lived on Lewis the sea has been slowly rising. Even 3500 years ago
when these Bronze Age walls were built, there was dry land with pastures, arable
fields and birch, willow, rowan and hazel woods where now the tide ebbs and
flows in the inlets of Loch Roag.
The first arable fields around Calanais were cultivated before 4000BC. Barley
was probably the main crop. Farming on the rigs (narrow earthen ridges created
for seed beds) under the Standing stones probably started many centuries later.
Ten to twenty generations before the Standing Stones were set up, the rigs were
abandoned and covered by grass and heather, while birches spread over the fields
in the valleys around.
Around 3000 BC, great changes were taking place throughout Britain. It was the
beginning of the end of the building of chambered tombs, although paradoxically
some of the finest were created around that time. As new ideas spread, earthen
enclosures with massive banks and ditches were laboriously constructed, and
timber and tall stone circles were set up inside them. The people lived in small
settlements containing several houses. Some kind of light structure was at this
time built at the eastern part of the Calanais site which was to be surrounded
by the ring.
Around 2600 to 2500 BC, stock farming became more important locally. One of
the mysteries of Calanais is whether the small chambered cairn inside the ring
was built at the heart of a flourishing agricultural community, or on marginal
pastures at a time when the focus of settlement had moved away.
The Calanais stone ring is not a true circle, and it is not certain how it
was laid out. It is symmetrical, set along a line running true east-west through
the centre of the huge central stone. The western half of the ring is a true
semi-circle, but the eastern half is flattened, as if the ring faced the spring
sunrise. The southern row runs nearly due south towards the natural outcrop
called Cnoc an Tursa. However, the south row is not really straight and
the stones of the ring are not precisely on any neat geometrical figure. The
sense we impose on them is a modern sense, not necessarily a rediscovery of
ancient meaning.
The eastern row consists of five stones. It is crooked but it points
generally somewhat north of due east. The western row does seem straighter. By
chance it points pretty accurately along the Ordnance Survey gridlines plotted
on modern maps, which should warn us not to make too much of seemingly
significant alignments.
The avenue is broader in the north, narrowing as it approaches the circle.
Some stones have been lost and the traces of agricultural lazy beds north of the
modern track suggest they were uprooted during agriculture. Its east side is
nearly straight. The west side has a kink in it: the three stones nearest the
circle form a row pointing to the central monolith, while the rest are roughly
parallel to the eastern side. Perhaps the avenue was used fro ceremonial
approaches to the circle, but it may have had a different purpose, related to
the movements of the moon.
Inside the stone ring is a small chambered tomb. Just to the east are traces
of a later structure. There are 11 other satellite sites situated some
kilometres from Calanais, containing more stones.
