“A flint axe, recovered on a stretch of shore in St Ola, looks like being the oldest man-made artefact found in Orkney to date.
Dating from the Palaeolithic period of prehistory, the axe could therefore be anything between 100,000 and 450,000 years old.”
Full story: orkneyjar.com/archaeology/2011/05/26/flint-axe-found-on-orkney-shore-predates-the-ice-age/
if there really is no context for this, then storms could have ripped it from Doggerland and swept it onto this St Ola shore - unless from Bay o Scapa that is
What a beautiful object!