The genetic connection between the Loch Borralie individuals and Orkney populations suggests that the communities of the Iron Age north coast of Scotland were part of larger social networks that maintained connections across the sea and across distances that might seem formidable to people accustomed to terrestrial travel.

This finding connects to other recent archaeological evidence about the maritime communities of prehistoric Scotland.

The peoples of the Iron Age northern and western Scottish coast were not landlocked communities with limited horizons.

They were maritime peoples with boats and the navigational knowledge to use them, capable of maintaining social relationships — including the relationships involved in kinship, marriage, trade, and the sharing of cultural practices like funerary ritual — across the sea channels that separated the islands from each other and from the mainland.

The DNA evidence from Loch Borralie places the burial within this broader network.