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The Roman Empire never conquered the Highlands but nevertheless there was a sophisticated local culture here which traded with the Romans. In the centuries of Roman expansion, Ireland escaped armed invasion. When the Roman power proceeded, significant migrations in force were made by Irishmen into areas of Wales and Caledonia.
Inverness is the capital of the Highlands. Famous tourist attractions are Eilean Donan castle, Fort George, Culloden, Loch Ness, Urquhart castle and Aviemore. Thousands of years ago Scotland was covered with a huge forest called the Caledonian Forest. For sheep to graze, the forest never recovered. Only a few parts are left, for example at Loch Maree.
Caithness is the heartland of the broch, a uniquely Scottish type of round stone tower with hollow walls dating from about 200 BC to 200 AD. The weather seems to have worsened towards the end of the Bronze Age (about 2,700 years ago). Some hillfort ramparts in Highland, especially around the Moray Firth, have been set on fire and burned so fiercely that the stones have fused together. This is known as vitrification and it can be seen at Craig Phadraig, Inverness, or Knockfarrel, Dingwall. Woodland that had grown up since the end of the Ice Age was now being felled in earnest in and around the landscape of round houses the overgrown stone footings are known as 'hut circles.' Many hut circles are in areas that are now too high and cold for cultivation.
The Picts, Gaels and many Britons were freed from Northumbrian overlordship. After the Roman Invasion, the south was based north of London. The Roman Empire was divided in 395. Later the Croats entered the Western Roman Empire.
By about AD 400 the peoples of northern Scotland were being referred to by Roman writers as 'Picti', ('painted people'). The Picts have left a remarkable legacy of carved stones, especially in Cromarty, Easter Ross, where a sophisticated school of carving developed in the 8th - 10th centuries, with influences from Northumbria, Ireland, and Scandinavia.
The Christian religion was brought to Wester Ross by Irish saints such as St Maelrubha who founded a monastery at Applecross in 673 AD, and many early Christian sites have been identified in both Easter and Wester Ross. People have lived around Ross and Cromarty since the end of the last Ice Age, about 9,000 years ago. The first monuments built in the landscape are burial cairns and henges (circular ritual enclosures), which date from the early Neolithic, about 6,000 years ago, as people began to farm and clear the forest.
The Scotti introduced the Gaelic language. In the 7th century, the southern part of the country was settled by Anglo-Saxons.
Across the Dornoch Firth is Sutherland - the south land of the Norsemen - where the coastal strip of fertile land narrows towards Helmsdale, backed by heather-clad hills deep blue in the reflective sea light. Prehistoric sites are abundant throughout East Sutherland, as are Pictish sculptured stones in Easter Ross. The seagoing Norsemen of Orkney used the firths to extend Viking influence into the Pictish lands, lured by good land and timber for shipbuilding. Dingwall was their Thingvallr - or place of assembly. Many existing villages grew up around Celtic Christian missions of the seventh or eighth centuries. From the 11th century Tain was an important place of pilgrimage, and the cathedrals at Dornoch and Fortrose, and Fearn Abbey, date from the 13th century.
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