The bend in the River Boinne, County Meath, encloses one of the half dozen greatest of megalithic centers in the world, with Newgrange, Knowth, Dowth, and scores of satellite structures. More than half of the megalithic art so far known resides within this bend. We visited in 2009, and I posted a brief account,
http://roadeveron.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/bru-na-boinne.html, which I can not improve upon, except by quantity of pix.
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Newgrange at a distance, driving by; the white facing is quartz, from the
Wicklow Mountains, 50 miles away; must have been valued for something...
perhaps its luminescence...Newgrange is all about the sun... |
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| Bru na Boinne, then bend of the river Boyne (chartered helicopter view) |
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| The River Boyne |
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| In the museum, home sweet home, Ireland in the neolithic, 5,000-6,000 years ago |
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| 4-seater |
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| Neolithic toy |
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How to move megaliths...at Newgrange, they were probably floated down the river
on rafts, from a site miles away; then schlepped up the hill on log rollers; imagine
the work involved in just felling the trees and shaping the logs, using only stone tools... |
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| "Symbols" found in megalithic "art"; no Rosetta Stone found as yet |
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After the bus ride, the front exterior of Newgrange, with the quartz and the giant
curb stones; also after the tour (no fotos) of the passage way and cruciform chamber,
and demonstration of how the roof box directs sunlight, at sunrise on winter solstice,
down the passage way to the chamber and the ashes of the dead; so imagine how
you would calculate that 6,000 years ago... |
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Vicki beside one of the decorated curbstones at Newgrange; rather more of them
occur at Knowth, next hill over |
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The entry stone (said to be the most photographed megalith in the world), the
entrance, and the roof box |
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We hope to be spending winter solstice 2016 in Ireland; but we'll
be home for Xmas |
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