Swine team: pigs help uncover ice age tools on Scottish island

Archaeologists find stone tools left on Islay by hunter-gatherers about 12,000 years ago, long before humans were thought to have been there

Stone tools left by ice age hunter-gatherers who camped out on the east coast of the Scottish island of Islay about 12,000 years ago have been uncovered thanks to a herd of pigs that began rooting up stone implements on the shore.

The finds push the earliest evidence of human activity in Scotland back by more than 2,000 years - it had been thought that the earliest settlers crossed the landbridge after the ice age, about 10,500 years ago - and by 3,000 years on Islay.