July14 , 2026
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Trauma: A Double Edged Sword

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By Anderson
Trauma: A Double Edged Sword

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Buried Circle in Scotland Rewrites Violence Before Rome

Scotland's Buried Circle Rewrites Violence Before Rome Keywords: Neolithic Scotland, Machrie Moor, conflict, stone circles, archaeology, Roman Britain Brief: Standing stones in moorland mist; a bronze blade laid beside excavated earth.New discoveries at Machrie Moor and a major Edinburgh exhibition are pushing Scotland's prehistory away from pastoral myth and closer to a landscape of ritual, memory and organised violence.Scotland's ancient past is often imagined in stone, fog and silence. The newest archaeology suggests something noisier. Historic Environment Scotland this week announced the detection of a possible new prehistoric ring beneath the peat on the Isle of Arran: a circle of 12 pit-like anomalies forming a feature approximately 28 metres across, with space for two additional settings that may bring the original total to 14 posts or stones. Led by Dr Nick Hannon, the survey team used geophysical scanning equipment that detects underground disturbances without lifting a single turf. "The discovery of a new circle completely surpassed our expectations," Dr Hannon said. The find arrives at the same moment as the National Museum of Scotland opens Scotland's First Warriors, an exhibition tracing 4,000 years of conflict from the Neolithic to the Romans, covering more than 200 objects and asking how and why people fought, what weapons they used and what early conflict did to communities. Taken together, the two stories complicate the old image of early Scotland as a remote edge of prehistory waiting passively for civilisation to arrive. Ritual and Conflict Shared the Same Landscape It is tempting to separate ceremonial monuments from warfare, as if one belonged to religion and the other to politics. The new exhibition suggests prehistoric Scotland did not organise life so neatly. Machrie Moor's circles date from between roughly 3500 and 1500 BCE, and excavations have shown that several were preceded by timber circles in the same positions. The timber circle at Machrie Moor 1 has been radiocarbon-dated to 2030 ± 180 BCE, before the wooden posts were replaced with stone around 2000 BCE. The circles align with a prominent notch at the head of Machrie Glen, where the midsummer sunrise would have been visible, and later served as burial grounds for cremations and inhumations. The Edinburgh exhibition changes the emotional map of prehistoric Scotland. Stone circles were not necessarily built by peaceful mystics untouched by danger. They belonged to societies capable of both ceremony and force, burial and battle, symbolic order and lethal dispute. As the exhibition makes clear, interpersonal violence, fortification and organised conflict were real parts of Scotland's deep past, not marginal episodes but structural features of life on the moor. The landscape was never only sacred space. It was lived space. Before Rome, There Was Already History The most useful thing about these discoveries is that they pull Scottish prehistory out of the shadow of Rome. Too often, Britain's northern story begins when classical writers notice it. The Arran circle and the "first warriors" frame both insist that Scotland already had long, structured histories of monument-building, territorial meaning and conflict before Roman contact ever entered the picture. The Arran cursus, a ceremonial enclosure approximately 1.1 kilometres long sitting adjacent to the stone circles, underlines the landscape's sustained importance as a gathering place across millennia. The new ring at Machrie Moor has not yet been excavated, and the evidence for prehistoric violence remains open to interpretation. But the direction of travel is clear. Early Scotland looks less like an empty northern fringe and more like a dense world of ritual landscapes, armed communities and social memory stretching back 5,000 years. The stones were never mute. We are only getting better at hearing what kind of world they belonged to.Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates! Read also: The Outlander Effect: How the Show Put Scotland on the Map Rural Europe Pushes Back Against Megafarms Homer in a Mummy Rewrites Cultural Borders
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Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the closure of Israel’s diplomatic mission in Ireland on Monday after joining the legal case, waged by the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

European Momentum on Palestinian Recognition

Ireland’s decision to join the ICJ case is no surprise after Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and Norway announced in May, earlier this year, the formal recognition of a Palestinian state. Recognition, before any formal peace process, remains a sticking point for states that acclaim public support for the self-determination of the ‘Palestinian people’ whilst shying away from any formal action. Successive votes, in the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council, attest to this. 

Ireland’s action to recognise Palestine signalled a momentous break in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dublin, like others, did not buy the age old ‘two-state solution.’ In reality, what has the two-state paradigm done for anyone, but Israel? 

Israeli leaders, namely Binyamin Netanyahu, formerly spoke of a Palestinian state in English-speaking outlets whilst in Hebrew Netanyahu openly embraces Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria otherwise green-lighting expansion, settlement, and annexation. 

Foreign Policy Shifts 

Israel’s war in Gaza, otherwise rephrased by Arab media outlets as ‘Israel’s war on Gaza’, continues to pile pressure on other EU-27 states to recognise Palestinian statehood all the while supporting South Africa’s case at the ICJ. Malta, Belgium, and Luxembourg are reported to be considering recognition according to diplomatic sources.

Israel’s initial military actions in Gaza appeared totally proportionate in response to the horrific terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on the 7th October. IDF troops entered Gaza hoping to destroy, eliminate, and tackle the security threat posed at its southern border. 

IDF Actions

However, IDF actions continue to come under scrutiny. The age old ‘human shields’ argument, postulated by Israeli Ambassadors on media screens, is tiring as it is taxing. Simply put, both Israel and Hamas situate their command rooms in densely populated areas at risk of bombing at any time. Hamas’ tunnel networks harnesses houses, hospitals, and towns as command rooms whilst Israel’s Mossad intelligence centre is located in central Tel-Aviv.  

The death toll in Gaza was to be high in any case, based on previous encounters between the IDF in previous Gaza wars, although warfare requires proportionality.

Foreign Minister of Jordan Ayman Safadi – Hamas is an ideology and you cannot kill ideology.

Even if we take away, proportionality, FM Safadi is right to note the legitimacy of going after Hamas… even without Hamas’ infrastructure, Israel will fail to dislocate Palestinian’ trauma in the Nakba, War of 1967, Second Intifada, and now the war on Gaza.

Humanitarian Suffering in Gaza

The targeting of humanitarian workers, shutdown of media reporting in Gaza, and the false advertising of ‘designated safe zones’ across Gaza questions the genuine war aims of Israel if it sought to eliminate Hamas’ infrastructure. 

Hamas does embezzle aid flows, divert food deliveries, and monitor its own population, however, to blame Hamas alone for the death toll in Gaza is duplicitous. Israel controls aid inflows into Gaza at the point of entry by land and sea. Therefore, Israel has a moral responsibility – as well as legal jurisdiction under humanitarian law – to ensure a sufficient provision of humanitarian assistance at the point of entry irrespective of Hamas’ actions inside Gaza.

The ICJ Case of South Africa

The Global South were quick to support South Africa in its case against Israel. As a state, built on racial division, South Africans share a lot with the Palestinian people as does Ireland. Subjugated by colonial force, post-colonial states understand the power dynamics at play across the international system. Spain and Ireland’s support for the ICJ case are testamont to a universal application of international humanitarian law without its cookie-cut application by actors namely Washington.

Internal Politics in Israel 

One of the key issues in Israeli politics today is ‘trauma.’ Trauma does strange things to the human psyche… in fact, it defiles our rational state of mind and makes one prone to finding someone to blame, some polarising argument, or even safety in the act of punishment: physical or emotional. Either way, the Jews and Arabs have suffered significant periods of trauma throughout history yet both people(s) have co-existed in Europe and the Middle East. 

Dialogue, inclusion, and sincerity are all necessary if Jews and Arabs are to build bridges after the events preceding and following the 7th of October. 

Future Path Ahead: ‘The End of all Wars’

The international community can do a lot to guide Israelis and Palestinians to a better path even if that subverts justice at the ICJ. President Trump is likely to scupper ICJ officials from arresting Netanyahu and sanctions on the ICJ are likely.

Two options are on the table, one is ideal, yet only one is realistic: a one-state reality. Trump’s plans to expand the Abraham Accords whilst green-lighting Israeli expansion into the occupied Palestinian territories will inevitably solidify this concept of ‘Greater Israel’ whilst the status of Gaza will be governed by an international security force under a UN-mandate. Israel’s operation in Lebanon, up until the Litani river, occupation and expansion of settlements in the Golan Heights up to Mount Hermon, Syria, and now westwards to the Jordan river only confirms the inevitable. 

At the end of all this suffering, compiled by trauma, Palestinians deserve self-determination even if that translates to one sovereign state between the river and the sea under Israeli sovereignty. Palestinian fragmentation, political and geographical, and Israeli politics remain the fundamental barrier to any two-state solution. Breaking down either barrier demands tackling trauma on both sides.

Trump’s presidency and the realities of the international system mean that the time is up on any two-state solution.

  • Editor-in-Chief & MENA Analyst

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