An A-Z of Things to See in Ireland: Neolithic Ireland

In my A-Z of Things to See in Ireland I recommend archaeological evidence of Neolithic Ireland for the letter N. The fascination with such megalithic memorials to loved ones is hard to suppress.  We have to take this in context.  Newgrange in Co. Meath is as old as the Valley of the Kings Pyramids in Egypt.  But it is also estimated that Newgrange, one of the greatest passage tombs of Neolithic Ireland, is older than Stonehenge! This is considered the stone age.

Let’s put this in context.  Before Neolithic Ireland than was Mesolithic Ireland.  These people were hunter gatherers who lived  before 4,500 BCE.  They used stone tools and treated their dead with reverence.  The period that concerns Neolithic Ireland is roughly from 4,500 –2,500 BCE.  During those two millennia the inhabitants of Ancient Ireland moved from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to introducing farming.  By the end of the era they had discovered  how to develop metal tools.  The Bronze Age began.

One of the best ways to see the interaction between landscape and human habitation is to visit the Cavan Burren, part of the Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark.  This is a truly relict landscape with evidence of continuous human habitation from Mesolithic to modern times.  Along the shores of Lough MacNean, which the Cavan Burren overlooks, there has been found evidence of their stone tools.  Of course, the lough itself would have been a source of ample food since it teams with many species of fish.  Indeed, farther west in Lough Melvin there is arctic chard, which is a prehistoric species that has made it through to modern times.

By 3,700BCE there were European blow ins who had mastered farming.  They brought seed and domesticated animals (pigs and dogs most probably) over with them.  They looked to finding forests to clear, plant and settle. They buried their dead close by.   What those early farmers had not figured out was the problem of soil erosion.  They cleared the forest, planted. But then the soil eroded and became more acidic which is good for specialised crops but generally you need a balanced pH in you soil.  Over time this acid soil became peat bog.

In the Cavan Burren we see the how this cycle played out.  There is Cuilcagh in the distance which is a National Park and has a large restored blanket bog.  The bog conservation is important to regulate the water table.  This limestone landscape, shaped by sliding ice sheets a few geological ages before, is riddled with underground caverns and watercourses. It offers many sources of wholesome spring water, which would have been attractive to the inhabitants of Neolithic Ireland.  That blanket bog has been formed over time from the acidification of land cleared by our distant ancestors who had yet to advance their agronomy to crop rotation patterns.

Yet they settled and they built more permanent dwellings.  These are thought to have been rectangular structures of felled timber with thatch for roofs, a smoke hole  as a primitive chimney and clay as a bit of draft exclusion.  A speculative model of a  Neolithic Ireland house has been erected at the Ulster American Folk Park near Omagh in County Tyrone.

What is not speculation is that the inhabitants had a sophisticated sense of reverence for their dead.  These are the builders of dolmens – court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs and wedge tombs.  On the Cavan Burren you can see an example of a wedge tomb at The Giant’s Leap.  We cannot know how the ancestors looked.  We may speculate what sort of clothing they devised.  We know much more about how clever they were at making tools.  We have evidence that even at these early stages, in what we would consider quite brutal forms of shelter, that they gave time to make art by sculpting on the glacial erratics that litter the Cavan Burren.

So it not to wide a stretch to believe that perhaps these ancestors were Giants.  If not literally in metres of height, then certainly in their spirit.  Walking around the relict landscape of the Cavan Burren we can get intimations of that mortality that has yet left a mark and is, therefore, immortal.