"Older than the pyramids"

Yesterday we went to Newgrange, a Neolithic passage tomb constructed in 3200 BC. As Vance told us about 65 times last semester, the mound predates Giza by 500 years and Stone Henge by 1000 years. We got to the visitor center a half hour early and browsed the museum for a bit. We watched a short video about the speculated purposes of the tomb (people weren’t really buried there) and then took a shuttle to the tomb itself. The pre-Celtic people who built Newgrange aligned it with the sunrise of the winter solstice so that the sun lights an inner room for 17 minutes a year on that day. We got to go in the tomb itself and see a simulation of what that would look like.

Here is a photo of the passage tomb:



We walked around outside for a bit and took photos until our shuttle came back to take us to the visitor center. We ate sack lunches in a nice picnic area near the visitor center and then went to Mellifont Abbey, an old Cistercian monastery that was once home to 14 monks. Today, it’s in ruins, but some of the main structures, like their bath house, are still recognizable.

Next we went to Monasterboice which is basically a cemetery with two high crosses (one the tallest in Ireland, I think) and a round tower. We spent a good 15 minutes there before boarding the bus again for Slane Hill.

Slane Hill was a hill where St. Patrick lit a fire on Easter. The lighting of this fire made the high king of Ireland rather angry because it interfered with one of the Celtic holidays (Beltane maybe?). The king came to Christ, though, so all is well. Anyway, now there’s a cemetery and some ruins at the top of the hill, so other people in my group climbed on those a lot. I’m afraid of heights, so I didn’t do much climbing.