Early People on Rum - Exploiting the Island's Natural Resources
The earliest people on Rum arrived in the Stone Age, and one of their main settlements was on the shores of Loch Scresort, close to the present village of Kinloch. Dating from almost 9000 years ago, this is among the earliest known settlements anywhere in Scotland. These people would have been nomadic hunter-gatherers, and one of the reasons for their settling on Rum may have been the availability of useful natural resources. Agates from Bloodstone Hill played an important part in the early history of Rum. The agate, or bloodstone, is hard but fractures easily and smoothly. It is similar to flint, which is rare in northwest Scotland, and so it was used to make tools of many kinds, including arrowheads, scrapers and blades. Rum bloodstone was an important resource at this time and it is found on a variety of sites from Ardnamurchan to the Inner Sound, which indicates that the Stone Age inhabitants obviously had wider connections.
By 4000 years ago, people on Rum were farming some of the sheltered glens, and still making use of bloodstone for tools. Bronze Age cairns have been recognised at places such as Guirdil and Harris, and Iron Age forts at Kilmory and Shellesder.
Christianity arrived on Rum in the 7th century AD, following the founding of St Columba's monastery on Iona in the 6th century. Sandstone pillars incised with crosses have been found at Bagh na h-Uamha and Kilmory, and there may have been a chapel at Kilmory. However, many of the place names on the island date back to the Vikings - names such as Askival, Dibidil, Hallival, and trollaval all betray their Norse origins. Some of these names have subsequently passed into the geological literature, with terms such as 'allivalite' used for the type of gabbro that appears on Hallival. Rum was under the rule of the Vikings from the 9th to the 12th centuries, and then became part of the kingdom of the Lords of the Isles.