text: The team discovered a set of 12,000-year-old Ice Age stone tools while excavating Rubha Port an t-Seilich, on Islay in the Inner Hebrides.
  The tools included scrapers used for cleaning skins and sharp points for hunting big game such as reindeer.
  The excavation had been started after pigs foraging along the Islay coastline uprooted Mesolithic objects in 2009.
  Archaeologists from the University of Reading found animal bones, plant remains and a fireplace at the Mesolithic site.
  However, on the last day of the excavation in 2013, the team also uncovered tools which would have been used 3,000 years earlier.
  It is now thought they were made by people of the Ahrensburgian culture, which flourished in mainland Europe towards the end of the last Ice Age.
  Similar sites have recently been discovered in Denmark and Sweden, suggesting the Ahrensburgian people may also have been coastal foragers hunting sea mammals from skin boats.
  Prof Steve Mithen, who led the excavation with Dr Karen Wicks, said: "The Mesolithic finds were a wonderful discovery - but what was underneath took our breath away.
  "The Ice Age tools provide the first unequivocal presence of people in Scotland about 3,000 years earlier than previously indicated. This moves the story of Islay into a new historical era, from the Mesolithic into the Palaeolithic."
  Dr Wicks admitted the initial discovery was "more swine team than Time Team".
  She added: "Archaeology relies on expert planning and careful analysis, but a bit of luck is also very welcome."
target: Archaeologists found the earliest dated evidence of human activity in Scotland - with the help of a herd of pigs.