Oldest calendar

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed the world’s oldest lunar calendar in north-east Scotland. It is different from the conventional calendars. Excavations at a field in Aberdeenshire county revealed a series of 12 pits that appear to mimic different phases of the moon and track lunar months. The experts from University of Birmingham suggest that the ancient formation was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago.

Professor Vince Gaffney, who led the project, told BBC that the evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the year. The calender could have occurred 5,000 years before the first formal calenders were created in Mesopotamia, Gaffney said.