Brú na Boinne

My 92 year old mother had never been to Newgrange, so another visit there was a necessity!

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Brú na Boinne is a collection of ancient passage graves north of the Boyne River, i.e., an ancient cemetery. The largest of the passage graves are found at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Newgrange and Knowth are accessible only via an impressive visitor centre, and the visitor must take the buses provided to the site in order to see them. It is a visit totally worth taking, but arrive early as tickets are limited and sold on a first-come first-serve basis. (The only way tickets can be reserved in advance are if you go on an officially organised tour.)

The entrance to Newgrange (above) is fronted by the most amazing megalith. 

The chief archaeologist at Knowth did not subscribe to Professor MJ O'Kelly's take on the quartz and river-rolled rocks found in front of the largest mound there. As can be seen below, the rocks were left as they were found at Knowth (below) in comparison to O'Kelly's speculative reconstruction design of Newgrange's facade.

The entrance megalith to Knowth isn't as impressive as that at Newgrange (though impressive nonetheless!) and unfortunately due to building in another historical era, the passage is not accessible as it is at Newgrange. 

Knowth is an amazing site, and I highly recommend that a visitor see both it and Newgrange, as there are different things about each that are unique. Knowth's mound is larger and has many satellite grave mounds beside it. Knowth alone holds 30% of all megalithic art found in Europe.

The large mound at Knowth has an impressive amount of visible decorated stones. Here are three!

Before heading back to our base in Drogheda, we stopped by Dowth, where we had never been. My Mum stayed napping in the car, which was just as well as the mound is surrounded by a flock of sheep and the resulting mine field of their droppings! But without other tourists this place is extra special -- this burial site pre-dates the pyramids and Stonehenge. The mound is quite large, with some evidence that there has been an internal collapse of some sort. Only a few of the megalithic kerbstones are visible but following their trajectory one can imagine the location of the others below ground level (raised by time's sediment).

Post passage grave builders at Knowth and on this site, built souterrains for food storage and for protection.

A souterrain at Knowth precludes development of the passage grave for visitors, but the souterrain at Dowth is in a different spot from its entrance. It is barred however (presumably for public safety as Dowth is an open site) but one can peek through the bars at the structure of the passage grave. Having been inside Newgrange, it is easy enough to imagine the end chambers to which this would lead.

Newgrange

Last week I was up at Brú na Boinne, near Drogheda, visiting Knowth and Newgrange prehistoric passage graves. They are magnificent neolithic sites, older than both the Great Pyramid at Giza and Stonehenge. At the entrance to Newgrange the tour guide pointed this megalith out as probably the most photographed stone in the world. He was probably right. The carving is quite beautiful and mysterious. There is one other tri-spiral carved on a stone at the end of the interior passage (no photos allowed inside).

As with the megalithic kerbstones at Knowth, I was completely fascinated by the Neolithic art from more than 5000 years ago.

There is no final agreement between archaeologists about whether the designs are scientific, religious or linguistic. It's anyone's guess as to what was going through the minds of the prehistoric makers.

Around the passage grave at Newgrange there is also a stone circle. The tour guide didn't say anything about it this time, nor do I fully remember from previous tours of the site, but I think the circle came later, so time-wise is comparable to Stonehenge and Avebury, which I have had the pleasure of visiting many years ago.

Some years ago the tour guide had implied that the placement of the sea-rolled grey stones and the white quartz that form the facade of Newgrange were entirely made up. This time the guide gave a plausible reason for the pattern, which would be quite startling to prehistoric viewers; the archaeologist Professor MJ O'Kelly had done numerous experiments on the patterns formed by fallen rocks before meticulously deciding each stone's placement on the facade.

Since I had been to the nearby site of Knowth earlier in the day and seen the jumble of sea rolled grey stones and white quartz (neither of which are local stone) surrounding the largest monument there, I could imagine O'Kelly's reconstruction rationale. Although the tour guide at Knowth suggested that the stones may be to form a path rather than a facade, I couldn't imagine walking on these lumps!

Knowth

Yesterday was the perfect day to explore Brú na Boinne - the passage grave monuments in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath. I had last been to Newgrange and Knowth in 1997 and a lot has changed at Knowth especially. Nearly 20 years ago this site was still in a state of discovery -- maybe that is an understatement as I am sure there will always be something new to discover there -- but there were no didactics or guides, one just simply walked among the ruins looking. Though there is something magical about doing just that, the "cleaned-up" site allowed for better understanding of what one was looking at. So the view from the entrance of several tumuli overshadowed by the largest passage grave (bigger than Newgrange) begins the enchantment...

This is one of the smaller passage graves being singled out so that its structure is obvious: the opening to the passage is visible behind the entrance stone and kerbstones (megaliths) can be seen surrounding the mound.

I was most fascinated by the wonderful examples of Neolithic art! The huge kerbstones of the largest mound were all carved.

The drawings are all abstract and it is completely unknown whether they are a form of writing, religious symbolism or scientific/geographic symbolism.

The architecture of these mounds is so advanced: dry stone building which doesn't leak, corbelled roofs over cruciform passages and all covered by several tons of soil and rock which has lasted  for 5000 years... With this in mind, personally I tend to think of the drawings on the most advanced level possible: some kind of symbolism which blends science, geography and religion to have real meaning for the people who created these amazing structures.

The very exciting thing for me was to see the tool marks of design creation and to be able to run my fingers through the grooves of these prehistoric drawings.