Geography of Scotland example at Aberdeen. Much of the Scottish coastline consists of a machair formation, a dune pasture land formed as sea levels subsided. The east coast has several significant estuaries and other nature reserves including the Ythan Estuary and Fowlsheugh, both of which have been designated as Important Bird Areas. Firths of Scotland include the Solway Firth, Firth of Clyde, and Firth of Lorne on the west coast, and the Cromarty Firth, Moray Firth, Firth of Tay, and Firth of Forth on the east coast. The Pentland Firth is not an inlet, but the strait that separates the Orkney Isles from
Agriculture in prehistoric Scotland of Britain, and only after the ice retreated did Scotland again become habitable, around 9600 BCE. Mesolithic hunter-gatherer encampments formed the first known settlements, and archaeologists have dated an encampment near Biggar to around 8500 BCE. Numerous other sites found around Scotland build up a picture of highly mobile boat-using people making tools from bone, stone and antlers. The oldest house for which there is evidence in Britain is the oval structure of wooden posts found at South Queensferry near the Firth of Forth, dating from the Mesolithic period, about 8240 BCE. From the Neolithic period, beginning around 6,000 years