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In Loch Tay, of the 13 crannogs that have been radio-carbon-dated, nine date back to the same period as Oakbank. Four others seem to have been built 2,400 and 1,800 years ago. Those two spikes in activity - one in the mid-first millennium BC, the second toward the end of the millennium - echo a trend seen throughout Scotland. In part, this may have stemmed from the same reason that caused a boom in Welsh hill forts in the same period: climactic deterioration.See also:
Around 536 AD, there was a well-documented catastrophe - likely caused by one if not two volcanic eruptions, or perhaps a series of comet impacts - that covered the Northern Hemisphere in a haze of dust. This caused crops to fail and made it colder and wetter.
As researchers Mike Baillie and David Brown, among others, have pointed out, these events line up with a spike in building crannogs in both Ireland and Scotland.
Comment: This new perspective on the Nazca lines could go some way to explaining why, in the desert, they chose to depict a killer whale (orca): Orca geoglyph re-discovered in southern Peru
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