174 years ago there was a huge storm in northern Scotland, and it uncovered something strange.

From beneath the soil emerged a perfectly preserved village older than the Pyramids, and it even had furniture.

This is the 5,000 year old story of Skara Brae...

Orkney is the name of an archipelago just off the coast of northern Scotland.

It was here, in 1850, that a colossal storm partly destroyed a grassy hill by the sea.

When locals investigated they discovered that it had revealed what seemed to be walls made of large stones.

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A local landowner and amateur archaeologist called William Watt started a proper dig, and after excavating four houses he brought in an expert called George Petrie.

By 1868 the importance of the discovery — which some claimed to have known about for years — was clear.

There were further studies done in 1913, but it wasn't until another storm in 1926 uncovered even more ruins that Skara Brae was properly excavated.

An archaeologist called V. Gordon Childe led the work there and wrote a book about his findings.

Childe thought Skara Brae was from the Iron Age, but in the 1970s — using radiocarbon dating — it was finally established as a Stone Age village.

People had lived here for about 500 years, from 3,100 BC to 2,500 BC.

A miraculous prehistoric survival.

There are ten structures in total, perhaps home to 100 people, who lived on livestock, crops, and seafood.

Inside each house is furniture, including beds and cabinets and chairs and fireplaces and toilets, all made from stone.

Rudimentary, but not unhomely.

These houses were then connected by covered and paved passageways.

The subterranean lifestyle was surely about keeping warm and dry during the long, cold, windy, wet, and harsh winters of Orkney.

Why was everything built from stone? Because there was a lack of trees and therefore wood on Orkney — they had no choice but to use stone.

It is essentially because of this fact that Skara Brae had been so well preserved; wooden structures would not have lasted so long.

What happened in the end? Nobody knows for sure.

Some have argued that the villagers fled because of natural disaster, whether a storm or flood.

Others argue it was abandoned gradually, eventually forgotten, and then naturally buried over the centuries.