Carl Reavey will give an illustrated talk at the Islay Natural History Trust in Port Charlotte tonight entitled “Eating the Wildlife”. This talk will be an irreverent look at what the first people to arrive on Islay during and after the last Ice Age might have had for dinner. These first settlers were ‘Hunter-Gatherers’, living on the herds of wild game, birds, fish, shellfish and wild plants that they hunted and harvested from the countryside around them. What kind of animals did they share their world with? How did they hunt? What tools and weapons did they make and use? How did they cook, in a world without metal or pottery?

The hunters and gatherers of the Mesolithic, or ‘Middle Stone Age’ had a lifestyle which sustained them for around five thousand years or longer. It was a time of wild climate change, when the landscape looked very different from what we see around us today. Carl will be joined by Susan Campbell who will be looking at some of the archaeology including, incredibly, evidence which indicates that one of Scotland’s first primary schools may well have been on Islay’s west coast in about 7500BC! Continue reading...

The Islay Natural History Trust holds regular meetings and talks at the Field Centre in Port Charlotte, aiming to have a guest speaker in every month of the year. August saw Michal Sur, who works in conservation in Islay, take us on an entertaining trip to two tropical islands in the Indian Ocean; Aride and Denis in the Seychelles. We had a look at some of the ‘work’ that he had to do out there for the RSPB, while leaving the local lizards to do the washing up. Everyone is welcome to the talks. There is a small entrance charge (talk is free for INHT members). For more info check out the blog

Tag: inht wildlife nature history