Modern Discovery
The chessmen were discovered in early 1831 in a sand bank at the head of Camas Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. There are various local stories concerning their arrival and modern discovery on Lewis.
Malcolm "Sport" Macleod from the nearby township of Pennydonald discovered the trove in a small stone kist in a dune, exhibited them briefly in his byre and sold them on to Captain Roderick Ryrie. One reported detail, that it was a cow that actually unearthed the stash, is generally discounted in Uig as fabrication. Malcolm Macleod's family were evicted from Pennydonald several years later when the area was cleared to make the farm at Ardroil.
Read more about this topic: Lewis Chessmen
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or discovery:
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)