The Standing Stones of Callanish

If you don’t mind gray skies and misty bogs, you can wander through one of the world’s intriguing mysteries. It’s a group of huge, upright stones, weathered and wood-like, but still erect after five thousand years in the Scottish islands. In the nineteenth century peat diggers excavated the isolated monument after falling leaves from a dozen centuries halfway buried it in decayed vegetation. The stones stood so intact that archaeologists didn’t need to restore the ancient assemblage, except for straightening up one fallen stone.

So why are these stones significant?

Almost a…