Monastery discovery sheds new light on the Picts

Long dismissed as savages who hindered the advancement of civilization in Scotland and the North of England, the Picts are now being seen as a sophisticated culture "capable of great art, learning and the use of complex architectural principles."

What has changed the mind of researchers is the discovery of a Pictish monastery at Portmahomack, Scotland, which is believed to have housed 150 monks and workers, and functioned as a religious center of the sort that produced the Book of Kells. "And, in a discovery described as 'astonishing, mind-blowing' by architectural historians, it appears that the people who built the monastery did so using the proportions of "the Golden Section", or "Divine Proportion" as it became known during the Renaissance hundreds of years later."