Archeologists found plenty of Stone Age tools from the Mesolithic over the years, but nothing from the much earlier Palaeolithic - seeming to confirm the hypothesis that humans didn’t arrive here until about 10,000 years ago. In 2016, a study found that the appearance of Banksy’s works correlated with the known movements of Gunningham; lawyers commenting on the study did not suggest that the paper’s conclusions were flawed. Our regular look at some of the faces which have made the news this week. Above is a work by BANKSY (main picture), with NEANDERTHAL MAN, WHITNEY HOUSTON, CHRIS LANGHAM and WYNTON MARSALIS. As ice sheets retreated, opening up Scotland, all these animals - bears, reindeer, wolves - would have been “pioneers into a new world too” along with the humans who depended on them. As the land warmed, “opportunities were revealed and animals and humans alike fill this space. It’s less about being brave and going into the unknown, and more about moving with the opportunities … You can also think of it in terms of this: if all your friends went somewhere wouldn’t you go there too?” It may be during the day in a famous gallery that an illicit painting of a bucolic scene disfigured with police incident tape, or a Warhol-type can of soup bearing the Tesco label, or a version of Monet's Water Lily Pond with a shopping trolley in its reflective waters, or the transformation of Rodin's The Thinker into The Drinker by way of a traffic cone placed on the subject's head, are surreptitiously placed among the legitimate exhibits.

So why have no human remains from the Paleolithic yet been found? Scotland, it seems, “represents a real challenge” for archeologists. We don’t have that many cave systems, which are really good at preserving remains. Our soils are also acidic and “just love to melt bone”, Britton says. Nor does the country have many deposits of flint, so ancient humans would have mostly used other materials - like animal bone and antlers - which also get ‘melted’ in acid soils. “It’s a perfect storm of poor preservation conditions,” she adds. He looks like a cross between Jimmy Nail and Mike Skinner of the Streets,” said Hattenstone, “white, 28…”Around 60-30,000 years ago, there was as much chance of humans going extinct as Neanderthals. “It could have been us as well as them … The more interesting question is: what if it was Neanderthals who came out on top? Would they have done what we have to the planet? But that’s the kind of conversation you have over a pint late at night.” In a highly critical judgment, the court found the applications were being made in bad faith. It was a similar finding to a September decision on Banksy’s trademark application for Love is in the Air.

Reindeer remains have been found in Assynt ‘bone caves’. “Were these reindeer migrating across Doggerland?” Britton asks. Examining ancient flora and fauna remains will also reveal an approximate date for when Scotland became habitable as the ice sheets retreated. Finding Neanderthal remains is complicated by the fact that later movement of ice sheets basically “scoured the land”, says Britton. However, given the warmer climatic conditions, she adds: “If the question is whether humans were in Scotland 40,000 years ago, I’m not entirely sure why not - if you’ve all these animals living here, why not?” The fridge freezer is now in storage and will be returned once it has been made safe to the public," the council said. Caves found with remains of Paleolithic reindeer will be investigated. “It would be wonderful if we found homo sapiens,” she adds. Cut marks - signs of butchery - on animals bones dated to the Paleolithic will also help explain where and how humans lived in Scotland at the time. Clearly, if reindeer could make it to Scotland during this period of warmer weather, so could humans. And so could Neanderthals. We know Neanderthals made it as far as the English Midlands around 50,000 years ago - so why would they not journey a few hundred miles further north where conditions were still habitable in what’s now Scotland?Another possible reason for just how little we know about Scotland’s Palaeolithic Stone Age is that archaeology has tended to focus on the ‘macho’, Britton suggests. Indiana Jones-type archeologists - “largely male” - were most interested in evidence of humans hunting big creatures like mammoths. In Scotland, that evidence didn’t exist, due to our complex conditions. It’s proof of how the mindset and pre-occupations of modern humans shapes how we study the past. If animals were migrating from what’s now mainland Europe, across Doggerland and into England and Scotland, then our early settlers probably followed the same route. “We’ve got evidence from stone tools of possible cultural connections to southern Denmark and northern Germany,” Britton says, with artefacts showing distinct similarities.