The famous archaeological site of Bru na Boinne – “dwelling place of the Boyne” – is also commonly called “Newgrange,” after its star attraction.
These 5,000-year-old passage tombs – Newgrange and Knowth – are massive grass-covered burial mounds built atop separate hills, with a chamber inside reached by a narrow stone passage.
Mysterious, thought-provoking, and mind-bogglingly old, these tombs can give you chills.
Bru’ na Boinne Visitor Center – Built in a spiral design echoing Newgrange, this superb interpretive center houses interactive exhibits on prehistoric Ireland and its passage tombs.
The exhibition introduces you to the Boyne River Valley and its tombs.
No one knows exactly who built the 40 burial mounds found in the surrounding hills.
Exhibits explore what the lives of these pre-Celtic people might have been like.
Tied to the seasons and eking out a livelihood with crude tools of stone, bone, or wood, they still created some intricate art.
Then around 3200 BC, someone had a bold idea.
They constructed a chamber of large stones, with a long stone-lined passage leading up to it.
They covered it with a huge mound of dirt and rocks in successive layers.
Sailing down the Boyne to the sea, they beached at Clogherhead (12.5 miles away), where they found hundreds of five-ton stones, weathered smooth by the tides.
Somehow they transported them back up the Boyne, possibly by tying a raft to the top of the stone so it was lifted free by a high tide.
They then hauled these stones up the hill by rolling them atop logs and up dirt ramps, and laid them around the perimeter of the burial mound to hold everything in place.
It would have taken anywhere from five years to a generation to construct a single large tomb.
Why build these vast structures? Partially, it was to bury VIPs.
A dead king might be carried up the hill to be cremated on a pyre.
Then they’d bring his ashes into the tomb, parading by torchlight down the passage to the central chamber.
The remains were placed in a ceremonial basin, mingling with those of his illustrious ancestors.
The tombs also served an astronomical function; they’re precisely aligned to the movements of the sun.
Since the tombs are aligned with the heavens, it begs he question: Were these structures sacred places where primal Homo sapiens gathered to ponder the deepest mysteries of existence?
Here is the rest of my photo dump:
