NewStone

Here is Newgrange, a 5200-year-old tumulus constructed during the New Stone Age.  It is younger than Carnac, just a little older than the oldest bits of Stonehenge, and much older than the Pyramids. The huge megaliths that make up most of the structure, and which corbel 20 meters upward in the burial chamber, were brought up the river Boyne from 20km away.  The white quartz facing was brought from 50km away, and if there were sunlight— here it is raining heavily— it would just blaze.

Only the cremated remains of five bodies were found in the three burial chambers, so either the family died out, or something else interrupted the process.  (Other tumuli have dozens of human remains.)

There’s a special slot above the doorway for the sun to enter on the winter solstice, and to illuminate a sort of “altar” in the burial chamber.

Newgrange isn’t even the largest tumulus in the neighborhood— there’s a bigger one a few miles away.  All have solar alignments, though this is the only one pointing at the winter solstice.

I find the Neolithic quite magical, and I love the tumuli and the monoliths and the stone circles and the barrows and causeway camps.  If nothing else, they’re an amazing testimonial to human ingenuity.

By the way, I asked our guide a question.  “If Newgrange is 5200 years old, how old is Oldgrange?”  But he didn’t have an answer.