Irish Farmer Stumbles on ‘Untouched’ Ancient Tomb

 

Newly Discovered Tomb, Dingle
Photo: National Monuments Service, Ireland

Recently, a farmer conducting routine land improvement work uncovered an “untouched” ancient tomb on the Dingle Peninsula on Ireland’s southwest coast. The County Kerry farmer stumbled on the structure after turning over a rock and spotting a stone-lined passageway underneath it. Human bone fragments and a stone which may have been smoothed by human hands were also uncovered at the site.

Growing up in Ireland in the fifties and sixties, it was not unusual to read local newspaper reports of archaeological discoveries by farmers draining the land or undertaking other work. In those days much of the work was done by hand before JCBs became common place. People like my father received a Government grant to drain a field which often entailed digging up large pieces of bog oak. Many years later he would receive another grant to plant the same field, effectively, putting the wood back again.

The structure appears to consist of one large chamber with a second chamber off it. Archaeologists from the National Monument Services and the National Museum visited the site after being alerted by the farmer. Experts say the grave is in its original state and contains human remains, making it a unique archaeological find. The site’s exact location has not been disclosed to ensure it remains undisturbed.

“It is very well built, and a lot of effort has gone into putting the large cap stone over it,” archaeologist Mícheál Ó Coileáin told the Times. “It’s not a stone that was just found in the ground. It seems to have some significance.”

Archaeologists from the National Monuments Service and the National Museum visited the site after being alerted by a farmer.
Photo: Courtesy RTE

Archaeologists say the tomb is "untouched" and that some of its unusual features, including a mysterious oval-shaped stone inside, indicate that it could be an early example of an ancient burial.

Bronze Age

The tomb appears to be a "cist" or chamber tomb, consisting of an underground stone-lined structure built to contain one or several burials and capped with a large stone. Typically, such burials date to the Bronze Age, commencing around 2500 B.C. Only the central part of the structure has been unearthed so far, so the exact layout of the structure remains uncertain. However, what has been seen so far appears different from other ancient tombs in the same area.

"Given its location, orientation and the existence of the large slab your initial thought is this is a Bronze Age tomb," Mícheál Ó Coileáin told RTE. "But the design of this particular tomb is not like any of the other Bronze Age burial sites we have here.”

Another possibility is that the structure may be a souterrain (underground chamber) associated with the early Christian period. The presence of several ring forts in the area supports this theory. Souterrains were used for storage or for shelter but further research will be required to establish who built this megalithic structure and when.

The newly discovered tomb seen from the south-west.
Photo: National Monuments Service, Ireland

Ancient Irish tombs

The Dingle Peninsula is home to several wedge tombs dating back to the early Bronze Age. There have been several impressive finds in mid-Kerry and the Tralee area in recent years, indicating much older habitation than previously thought.

Ireland has thousands of ancient monuments and tombs. The most famous is the passage tomb at Newgrange, beside the River Boyne, which is aligned so that the rising midwinter sun shines down its internal passage and illuminates a chamber deep within. Recent research found that one of the Bronze Age people buried inside the Newgrange tomb was the son of parents who were probably brother and sister - a practice not uncommon in ancient royalty.

Newgrange is one of many tombs in the area known as the Brú na Bóinne Neolithic cemetery, which is listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Megalithic tombs are to be found throughout Ireland with concentrations in Co Sligo including Carrowmore and Carrowkeel cemeteries. Some megalithic tombs date from more than 5,000 years ago, making them older than both Stonehenge in England and the oldest pyramids in Egypt.

Conclusion

The Dingle stone structure is believed to be an ancient tomb, possibly dating from the Bronze Age, although this remains to be confirmed. The fact that it appears to be in its original state and contains human remains and a hand-worked stone, makes it a unique archaeological find. Further work will be required to establish the function of the structure, who built it and when.

For further information see:

https://www.livescience.com/ancient-chamber-tomb-untouched-in-ireland.html

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0416/1210287-tombs-kerry-dingle-peninsula/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ancient-tomb-discovered-by-farmer-on-dingle-peninsula-1.4539731

New Henge Appears Near Newgrange

Crop marks caused by warm weather have revealed a buried henge monument in a field to the south of Newgrange.

Credit: Anthony Murphy and Ken Williams/Ireland National Monuments Service

This year’s exceptionally hot summer has proved to be something of a bonus for archaeologists in Ireland and the Britain. In Ireland, the heatwave dried the land of the Boyne Valley revealing the shadows of previously unknown circular enclosures. Indeed, the National Monuments Service has been dealing with a large volume of reports of hidden structures from around the country.

Anthony Murphy of Mythical Ireland and Ken Williams of Shadows and Stone, using drones, photographed previously unrecorded features in the fields near Newgrange. One of the images appears to be a large henge. A henge is a circular monument which would originally have been composed of uprights made of wood or stone. For our prehistoric ancestors, henges are believed to have had a religious significance.

Several types of ritual enclosure, ranging in date from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, are to be found in Ireland. Over fifty henges have been recorded and classified into three forms, termed embanked enclosures (71%), internally ditched henges (23%) and variant henge forms (7%).

In Ireland there are about eleven concentrations of henges. One of these concentrations, consisting of three henges, has been identified just south of the Boyle River. Towards the end of the Neolithic Period there is evidence in the form of henges for larger gathering.  There is typically little, if any, evidence of occupation in a henge, although they may contain ritual structures such as stone and timber circles. Several henges are located within 2km of passage tombs.

While the predominant form of henge in Britain has internally ditched banks, the majority of earthen embanked henges in Ireland have no obvious ditch on the inside of the bank. They occur mainly in the eastern part of the country and in counties Sligo, Roscommon, Clare and Limerick. The Boyne region features a notable concentration of henges. Almost half of the total number of henges recorded in Ireland are concentrated in County Meath. The monuments are mostly located along the Boyne.

Newgrange Passage tomb, County Meath

Murphy and Williams notified the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht of their discovery. The National Monuments Service carried out its own aerial reconnaissance of the Brú na Bóinne site. The henge is believed to have been built some 500 years after Newgrange, which dates from 3,200 BC, making it older than the Great Wall of China, the Great Egyptian Pyramid of Gizza and Stonehenge in Britain.

Archaeologist Dr Geraldine Stout states:

“I believe Newgrange is just the centre of a much larger sacred landscape and I think there was a whole series of facilities built for the pilgrims coming to Newgrange in prehistory. Generally, we believe these henge monuments were built up to 500 years after the main use of Newgrange and in a lot of cases they actually enclose the area of monuments.”

The enclosure is estimated to have a diameter of about 200 meters. ‘Dronehenge’, as it is referred to in Archaeology Ireland, encompasses two concentric rings of post-holes, surrounding an inner enclosure formed by a series of segmented ditches.

Over the centuries, the settlements disappear and farming takes place
Photo: Courtesy BBC News

A BBC News report on the increase in the appearance of “crop marks” in Wales provides more information on how this works and some more examples of sites which have appeared across Wales. Archaeologist Louise Barker of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales explains,

“It’s like a painting that comes out into the fieldscapes. We’re seeing new things with all of these cropmarks; we probably haven’t seen anything like this since the 1970s, the last time there was a really, really dry summer like this.” (BBC News Report)

It has been suggested that these sites would have been above-ground structures which fell into a state of disrepair over centuries and were eventually buried beneath the soil.

When the land dries out in the prolonged heat, the old fortifications retain moisture, so crops are more visible
Photo: Courtesy BBC News

Most ancient settlements added fortification or drainage ditches around them. Today, traces of these structures appear as darker green areas due to their retention of more nutrients and moisture than the surrounding ground. The crop marks are made by vegetation drawing on the better nutrients and water supplies trapped in long-gone fortification ditches - leading to lush green growth that stands out.

Archaeologists and volunteers at work on the excavation trench near the Newgrange passage tomb. The mound of the tomb is behind the trees on the skyline.

Credit: Matthew and Geraldine Stout

Recently, archaeologists in Ireland also discovered a new 5,500-year-old passage tomb at Dowth Hall, close to centre of the Brú na Bóinne, which is being called "the most significant megalithic find in Ireland in the last 50 years". The new passage tomb contains rock art is c 40m in diameter, approximately half the size of Newgrange. To date, two burial chambers have been discovered within the western part of the of the main passage tomb, over which a large stone cairn was raised.

The six kerbstones identified so far formed part of a ring of stones that followed the cairn perimeter. One of the kerbstones is heavily decorated with Neolithic carvings and is one of the most impressive discoveries of megalithic art in Ireland for decades. Archaeologists believe that the people who built this ancient resting place were likely to be descendants of Ireland’s first farmers.

An unusually high number of henges and ancient sites have been found over the decades along the River Boyne. Together, they make up the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO World Heritage site. Murphy and Williams have added to the record of such monuments and continue to discover new examples with their drones, including a possible barrow cemetery.

For further information please see:

(     https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/henge-monument-0010359

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44746447

https://www.mythicalireland.com/

https://www.shadowsandstone.com/portfolio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9ze6wFu6Pc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IayrxbMUJOA

Migration is not Something New

Early Skulls

Until recently, the earliest evidence archaeologists had for human occupation in Ireland was dated to around 8000 BC. However, scientists have recently dated a fragment of butchered bear bone from a cave in County Clare to 10,500 BC, thereby, pushing back the date for human settlement in Ireland by 2,500 years. At a time of mass migration in the world it is, perhaps, timely to consider our origin as a species and how humans went on to inhabit the globe.

Humans and chimpanzees are very closely related and separated about 7.4 million years ago.  There is only a 1% difference between the chimpanzee genome and our own suggesting that we have a common ancestor.

Today, modern humans or Homo sapiens, inhabit the whole earth. Looking back over the last half a million years, the picture was much more diverse, with three distinct lineages appearing: Homo erectus in Asia; and Homo heidelbergensis giving rise to Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa.

Image of Neanderthal Man

The Neanderthals thrived in Europe for around 300,000 years before modern humans arrived. The reason for the demise of this successful species remains a mystery. Neanderthals occupied Europe for at least 100,000 years during a period when glacial cycles dominated the climate. Excavations in Ibex, Vanguard, and Gorham’s Caves in Gibraltar have revealed evidence of Neanderthal occupation dating to possibly as late as 28,000 years ago. This makes Gibraltar the most recent Neanderthal occupation site yet discovered.

By 200,000 years ago, many innovations had been made in stone tool technology. For example, large handaxes became less common and were replaced with a range of smaller tools in more diverse toolkits. Tools made of flakes were favoured over large cores. Humans use tools to a much higher degree than any other animal and are the only existing species known to build fires, cook their food, wear clothes, and create art.

The first fossil evidence for any modern humans outside Africa comes from the Middle East, from  the archaeological sites of Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel, dating to around 120,000 years ago. However, this early expansion of modern humans was not maintained. A change to a colder climate may have driven those pioneers back into Africa. The expansion of our own species out of Africa that eventually led to the colonisation of the globe would start later – after 100,000 years ago.

Map showing the spread of humans

This dispersal out of Africa is believed to have started from Northeast Africa. Modern humans later spread worldwide, replacing earlier ancestors either through competition or interbreeding. They inhabited Eurasia (Europe and Asia) and Oceania (a region centred on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean) 40,000 years ago, and the Americas at least 14,500 years ago.)

Around 50,000 years ago, an improvement in the global climate, leading to the appearance of habitable lands where once there was desert, may have provided the opportunity for modern humans to spread into Europe.  Evidence from early modern human sites in Europe suggest that these early people moved into the continent along coasts and rivers, as they had done elsewhere.

Until about 10,000 years ago, humans lived as hunter-gatherers living in small nomadic groups, often in caves. Agriculture began independently in many parts of the world with different domesticated species. Hunter-gatherers already knew a great deal about plants and animals and often manipulated them or the environment to increase productivity. Farming entered Europe around 7000 BCE and was the main way of life across Europe by 4000 BCE.

Farming communities spreading into Central Europe around 5600 BCE had to adapt to bitter winters, heavy rainfall, and dense forests. They kept mainly cattle and farmed open river terraces. Farming spread through Western Europe and into other parts of Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe by 4000 BC.  Animals were initially kept for meat, hides, bones, and manure. Feeding animals on crop surpluses made them a food reserve, and large herds signified wealth and prestige. Domestic animals became far more important when people began using them also in other ways: for milk, wool, eggs, traction, and transport.

Examples of early metal working

The social importance of metals for making prestige objects with which people could show their status, led to the early development of metallurgy. Only later, with the development of alloys, did metal also become significant as a material for tools and weapons. Smelting copper and lead ores began in West Asia after 7000 BC, and by the sixth millennium BC casting was possible. By 2500 BC, metallurgy had spread through Europe. Bronze-working became widespread after 1800 BC with trade routes linking much of the continent circulating metals, particularly tin.

Prehistoric religion reflected people’s need to understand the world and explain disasters. Through rituals and offerings ancient societies sought to bribe or appease the divine forces controlling the world or its individual components. Since Neanderthal times, people have practised rites that showed concern for their dead, perhaps linked to a belief in an afterlife.

Newgrange Stone Age Passage Tomb

Burial in graves or tombs or under house floors, was common. Many societies practised other rites, including cremation, exposure, or disposal in watery places. Some thought it important to preserve the body and undertook mummification (for example, in Egypt and South America). Monumental tombs, such as tumuli, pyramids, and megaliths, could link the living and the dead to ancestral lands or sacred places.  

Humans and chimpanzees are very closely related and separated as recently as about 7.4 million years ago. Our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals thrived in Europe for around 300,000 years before modern humans arrived and may have survived until around 28,000 years ago. Innovation in stone tool technology aided the development and eventual spread of modern humans throughout the globe. Later developments in metal working and agriculture assisted this dispersal. Since Neanderthal times, people have practised rites that showed concern for their dead, perhaps linked to a belief in an afterlife.

Migration is not something new and, in a sense, we are all migrants whose ancestors were black and lived in Africa a long long time ago.

Further reading: Evolution - The Human Story (2011) by Dr.Alice Roberts

See also BBC DVD The Incredible Human Journey