Civilized Ireland

The key invention that ushered in the Neolithic Age was farming, fundamentally changing the fabric of Mesolithic society because people no longer had to spend all their time hunting. Additionally, they could built much larger, more permanent dwellings and, perhaps most importantly, had enough 'spare time' in which to innovate and think about things.

The practice of farming had spread from the Middle East, through eastern and southern Europe to reach Britain around 4000BC. One of the most important legacies left by the Neolithic farmers was their megaliths, or large earthen constructions, used primarily as burial places.

The Neolithic Age left a great mark on Ireland. The upland forests were cleared for farmland, and by the end of the age people were starting to clear the lower forests. Sheep, goats and cows had been imported into Ireland for the first time. Megalithic tombs peppered the landscape. By the time Bronze was introduced to Ireland around 2000BC, Neolithic culture was evident across Ireland.

Neolithic settlers cleared forests with stone axes, or by burnt them, in order to build farms. But as Ireland did not have many native cereal crops, and wild pigs were the only farm animals native to Ireland, these settlers introduced cows, goats and sheep - transported across the Irish Sea on wooden rafts towed by skin-boats or dugout canoes. They also brought wheat and barley.

The picture on the left shows Newgrange, a so-called passage tomb located in county Meath and is the most famous passage tomb in the world. The front half of the remarkable structure has been painstakingly restored to look as it did when built 4,500 years ago, which makes Newgrange at least as old as the Egyptian Pyramids and older than Stonehenge. Numerous other megaliths were also constructed in the Boyne Valley.

The beautifully carved stones at the entrance make it a worldwide attraction, as does the fact that the sun shines directly down the main passage at dawn on the winter solstice around December 21st. At the end of the main passage are three smaller chambers that may have been used for burying the dead.

The impact of why an ancient people buried a small room under 200,000 tons of rocks, so that a tiny ray of light might come in, can easily be lost on us. These people, a simple, Neolithic farming community, living nearly 5,200 years ago, with no concept of tools, set about to build a monument which would take over twenty years to complete, requiring a labor force of three hundred strong men, that would ultimately yield a single small room.

Each year for five days around the December 21 winter solstice - the shortest day of the year - the sun shines deep down the main passage, flooding with light a chamber where the remains of the dead were once laid. Newgrange was masterfully aligned by its builders so the sun only cuts through the gloom of the chamber at sunrise through a small window above the entrance. But if there is no midwinter sun, the solstice "clock" doesn't work.

When the tomb's solstice phenomenon was discovered in 1967, archaeologists were astonished Stone Age builders had the architectural skills and scientific understanding of the sun's movement that was needed to construct it.