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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free. Get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit with the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary All About Petra and the Nabateans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:25]
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- [02:48]
Tristan Hughes
Deep in the verdant countryside overlooking a sacred stands Ireland's most famous prehistoric monument, an enormous tomb made of stone and earth. Built more than 5,000 years ago, this stunning tomb lies at the heart of a Special landscape known as Brunebogne, the postal monument in a valley of Stone Age marvels. Its name is Newgrange. It's the Ancients on History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today we're exploring this wonder of the Stone Age world that is Newgrange. There is still lots of mystery surrounding this massive passage tomb that has endured for five millennia. But thanks to the tireless work of archaeologists over the past decades, well, many of Newgrange's astonishing secrets have started to be revealed. It is a fascinating structure situated at the heart of an equally fascinating landscape of the utmost prehistoric importance. And it's also the subject of a brand new documentary presented by myself that has just dropped on history hit. It's called Prehistoric Secrets of the Stone Age. So do check that out if you want after listening to this episode. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan, emeritus professor of Archaeology at University College Dublin. Morrish is an expert on the many Stone Age monuments of Ireland, including Newgrange. He also features in our new documentary on the subject. So it felt right to have him on as our expert for this accompanying Ancients episode. The story of Newgrange is one of stones and spirituality, of megaliths and mythology, of river travel and rock art. So let's get into it. Morish, it is great to have you on the podcast. It's good to see you again.
- [04:57]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Thank you very much, Tristan. It's very nice to be here as well.
- [05:00]
Tristan Hughes
Now, not only in my opinion are you the unofficial winner of the smoothest Irish accents that I've ever heard, but you are also an expert on Newgrange and surely this is one of the, if not the most famous prehistoric site in Ireland.
- [05:14]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, the most famous, I suspect, prehistoric site. It's obviously a World Heritage site. Part of a World Heritage site, probably maybe the best known of the three because of the solstice, which we can speak about. And Nowth would be the other great one, but Newgrange would be the one that certainly would have been the first to be well known. It was excavated in the 60s and 70s. The excavations there began around that time, but douth emerged in terms of of archaeological information slightly behind Newgrange in terms of information.
- [05:48]
Tristan Hughes
And in regards to that, I mean, you mentioned names there like Nowth straight away. So shall we answer the big question straight away? I mean, Maharish, what exactly is Newgrange? We can talk about Naoth as well. What exactly are these prehistoric monuments that we know the names of so well?
- [06:05]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
They are more or less circular Mounds usually constituted of stone and soil and so on, covering a megalithic tomb, which is entered along a passage from the exterior into a chamber in the interior. And this gives them the name passage tombs. And the ones in the Boyne Valley, including Newgrange and Nowh, these are enormous, you know, maybe 80 meters across, some of them, you know, they're quite 90 meters in the case of Nowth. They're very, very extensive, and they contain an enormous amount of material apart from anything else.
- [06:41]
Tristan Hughes
And that area you mentioned, the Boyne there. So we'll get to the River Boyne in a moment. But you mentioned, first of all, the word megalith. Now, what do we mean by the word megalith? I'm going back to my ancient Greek, and I think that's megas lithos. That is kind of great stone idea, isn't it?
- [06:54]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Exactly. Large stones, and these are enormous stones. In the case of Newgrange, which would have the largest stones actually in the Boyne Valley, some of the curbstones There are approximately 4 meters long, maybe a meter high by sometimes almost a meter wide as well. So an enormous mass of stone. And they seem to have been collected round about the area. They don't seem to have been quarried. You know, they may have been outcrops that were quarried, but they weren't. You know, the entire stone is not a quarried stone. It may have been broken off an outcrop or something like that. They're massive stones. And this is what gives its name. In the case of the mine valley, you know, there are. I can't remember the number, but hundreds of these massive stones were collected to build the megalithic tombs. And that in itself is an enormous amount of labor.
- [07:46]
Tristan Hughes
As you can imagine, these passage tombs and these great stones that are being built in the boyne Valley some 5,000 years ago. Maris, I mean, is it part of a much wider tradition when talking about this new Stone Age world, this Neolithic world, how far and wide should we be thinking that you can see a passage tomb like Newgrange, But I mean. But how far across the world should we also be thinking about passage tombs, similar style passage tombs at that time?
- [08:15]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Well, the megalithic tradition was very much part of Western Europe, and it seems to have emerged around the same time that farming arrived. Now there are megaliths in other parts of the world, like Japan and so forth. I think we'll just leave those aside and just deal with the Western European ones. And these ones in Western Europe, I think they spread from North Africa Certainly the Mediterranean islands, Iberia, France especially Brittany, and then up into Ireland, Britain, some of the Scandinavian countries as well. So it's quite an extensive area. And within that there is this passage tomb tradition, this particular type of tomb that has a passage leading into a chamber. And they're actually found across most of that area as well. But certainly in the Irish context, they are the most famous ones. And of course in Britain, Orkney especially Mice Howe and the various other ones there in Orkney, it always seems like.
- [09:12]
Tristan Hughes
Mace how and Newgrange and probably Nowth as well. They always seem to share that trophy of being the greatest Stone Age tomb surviving, isn't it? Whenever I put something up on social media or wherever about these tombs, they always say, oh, what about Newgrange or what about Mace Out? They always seem to share that title.
- [09:30]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
You know, both of them are very well known and there seems to be a certain connection as well between Orkney and the Bone Valley in the Stone Age, in the Neolithic. And of course, and we're dealing with a period around 5,000 years ago, these tombs, especially the ones in the Boyne Valley, appear to have been built maybe sometime around 3300 BC, 3200 BC. And the earthly ones are approximately the same time as well. And there seems to be some linkage because. And I'm switching from Newgrange to Nouth here for a second. I'm sorry about this. Just at knowth it's a more extensive arrangement of tombs because as well as the big mound at nouth, you have 18 smaller ones. But also within the big mound at Nouth you had two tombs, an east and a west tomb. And within the east tomb at Nouth, there was a very spectacular Macehead found, which was featured in the Stonehenge exhibition in the British Museum a couple of years ago. And that macehead, everything about it would suggest that it may well come from Britain and maybe from Orkney. Most likely be there's in Britain that it would have come from is probably Ark Day.
- [10:43]
Tristan Hughes
Yes, we had a look at that Mace head. I think we've created Berners Gilhooly in the National Museum of Ireland and it was such an extraordinary artifact, isn't it? And do feel free to bring in now once in a while during our chat, because his story is so intertwined with New Grange, especially when we get to topics like rock art. I want to bring in now. Well, actually, I guess another big name to throw into this conversation straight away to help us all with the time frame and just how old Newgrange is if it was built like 3200 BC, so more than 5000 years ago. Maris, this is a monument that's older than both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza. That always feels like, important to mention those two, too. Just to get the sense of just how old it is.
- [11:27]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
People, as you say, typically throw out that piece of information or piece of data. The interesting thing about Newgrange and indeed Stonehenge, maybe more so to Stonehenge than Europe. Newgrange is that these sites, they weren't built in a day, you know, they evolved, you know, and in the case of Stonehenge, it's very interesting there that we know that Stonehenge evolves, you know, from the different phases of activity there and so on. Newgrange looks more like a job of work, so to speak, in the sense that, you know, there was a certain integration in the way it was built. And Newgrange, the actual mound at Newgrange, is surrounded by a circle of standing stones. And these standing stones, now we assume it was a circle, only some of them remain. But the diameter across those standing stones is approximately the same as the diameter across Stonehenge, you know, the enclosing henge there, you know. And it would appear that the evolution of Stonehenge encapsulates more or less the same time frame as the evolution of Newgrange as a place, in the sense that Stonehenge began quite early, there was earlier activity on the site, and then it evolved into the great monument we know today, now that is later the Newgrange. But the actual site itself and its use as a special place would be around the same time as Newgrange, possibly even earlier in some cases. So I'm not sure. That's slightly complicated. But, you know, I think I would like to give credit to Stonehenge, so to speak, as well as Dugrange.
- [13:07]
Tristan Hughes
Well, okay, but that's fair enough. We're never going to shy away from giving credit to the amazing achievements of Stonehenge. But we've also focus on the amazing achievements of Newgrange and those people who built it. Let's talk a bit about the wider landscape of Newgrange. You've mentioned it is situated in the Boyne river valley. But Morrish, I've got in my notes, obviously the name Bruna Boyne. So give us a sense of the wider landscape that Newgrange is built within and why that landscape is really important when discussing its story.
- [13:38]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Well, Newgrange is located in County Meath in Ireland, north of Dublin. And it's a particularly fertile area of Ireland with very good land. So I suppose that's the first thing to bear in mind. And through it flows the River Boyne, which is not the longest river in Ireland, but for some reason seems to be the one that mythologically seems to have been the most significant over time.
- [14:01]
Tristan Hughes
This most sacred river, kind of very sacred river.
- [14:04]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
And lots of our legendary stories and mythology in Ireland reference the River Boyne and indeed the name Boyne itself. The Irish version of the River Boyne, the Gaelic version, it references a goddess in the, you know, the pantheon, so to speak, of Irish mythology and the sort of same name as the river itself. This goddess was the mother of Aengus. And you mentioned Bru Nabojne. The Broo is actually the stronghold or the sort of palace or the homestead of the God Aingus. It's the fortress of the bone, so to speak. And it's supposed to have been inhabited by the God Aengus, a member of the Tuatha de Danant, the pre Celtic people, in the understanding of those people, or the pre Irish, really. Angus was the son of Boyn herself, of the River Boyne, and of the great Celtic God, the Dogdar, the great Thu, the Donan God. So in mythology alone, it's actually a very significant place. Now what's very interesting about that is that the other sites in the Boyne Valley are Nowth and Douth, and indeed the newly discovered site at Douth hall, which is underneath an 18th century period house. These three sites, they all show signs of a lot of activity in early medieval times, with souterrains, underground passages being built into the mounds. In the case of Nouth, houses were being built on the edge of the mound and indeed on part of the mound. And all of this early medieval activity in the case of Nauth, caused quite some instability within the megalithic tomb because they were robbing stones and so on. They were in and out of the tombs, writing graffiti in them. But strangely enough, not at Newgrange. There's no evidence at Newgrange of this sort of intensive early medieval activity. And I often wonder if that's to do with the fact that it's associated with this God Aengus, and it's a very special place in myth. So it may well have protected the site. So that's so to speak. And the reason I'm going on about this is that the Boyne, of course, seems to have been a key factor in the location of these tombs, because the other group of tombs is at Loch Crew, over in the western part of County Meath. And these overlook the valley of the Blackwater river, which actually is a tributary of the Riverbyne. So the whole network seems to have been significant, the Byne, but especially the River Boyne itself. Then the other aspect of this is that the River Boyne flows eastwards through County Meath from Slane towards Drogheda, some miles to the east of Slane. And on its way, it meets a ridge which causes it to turn south and to loop around, giving us the famous name the Bend of the Boyne.
- [17:04]
Tristan Hughes
The Bend in the Boyne or the Bend of the Boyne.
- [17:07]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
And this ridge is a sort of an east west ridge. And on that ridge that, the three highest points on that ridge, these are the points at which Newgrange and North and Douth are built. So the landscapes have played a key role.
- [17:21]
Tristan Hughes
So it's interesting and to imagine in the stone Age world 5,000 years ago, the River Boyne, as you mentioned, good agricultural land there, fishing boats, people coming up and down that river when they're going along that bend in the Boyne. If those three big tombs, Newgrange, Nowth and Douth are on those highest points of the ridges, I mean, it almost feels like they are. They're Stone Age billboards. They can be seen by people going up and down that, if I keep on that kind of analogy, that motorway of the Stone Age, which was the River Boyne.
- [17:50]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Absolutely. And indeed, I think you've touched on something really significant that apart from visiting these sites individually, a wonderful coach tour is to drive along the south side of the River Boyne, the other side of the river, and you actually see the three tombs on the ridges above you, especially Newgrange and Elth down now, particularly as you're actually traveling along and the road runs along the valley of the river, just beside the river, the vista from the river would have been very significant. And the journey up the river, of course, the other thing about the River Boyne is that it's a very strong fishing river. And presumably it was like this always as well, salmon and so forth, you know, and eel, I think might have played a role as well.
- [18:36]
Tristan Hughes
So food resource as well for the River Boyne. So Newgrange, of all of these monuments in Brunebogne, and I'm sure we'll probably talk about some of the later ones in time too. I've got in my notes that There are some 40 still visible, but more than a hundred, like originally monuments on this area. The people themselves, Maurish who built Newgrange? Do we have any idea who these people were?
- [18:58]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Well, in some ways, we know them a lot through the tombs. In other ways, they are mysterious people, possibly because what they placed in the tombs, they don't seem to have placed in their. To have had in their daily lives. So they are mysterious. If you take something like the Boyne Valley, in spite of, you know, a lot of work has been done and feed working has taken place and, you know, flint working has been found, et cetera. But really, you would have thought that something as enormous as these great mounds and the work involved in them would have involved quite a large workforce of some kind, and indeed, people oversee that. All of which seems to suggest some sort of intensive settlement of some kind. But there's really no evidence of this settlement. We don't see anything like a village or, you know, it's hard to know. So some people have explained this by saying that perhaps it was nomadic. In other words, that a lot of the people who worked at Newgrange or were buried at Newgrange, something may have lived somewhere else. These may have been traditional places to which they brought the dead or something like that. It's very tricky. It's very difficult to know. Of course, we assumed there were farmers or there was certainly a farming economy underlying this massive output, because farming had come to Ireland maybe six or seven hundred years earlier, before the tombs in the eastern part of Ireland were built. The ones in County Sligo in the west, like Caramore and Caraquil, they were built a couple of centuries earlier. They certainly started a few centuries earlier. But it was really in the context of this arrival of farming and the spread of farming through Ireland and the consolidation of farming within Ireland that the megalithic tombs emerged. And particularly then the spectacular ones, the passage tombs. The interesting thing is that one of the ways that we know a little bit about them is through DNA research. One particular skull fragment from Newgrange has allowed geneticists to build a sort of a profile of the individual. A genetic profile of the individual. And it would appear that this person was related to some people from the Caramore tombs and also people who were found at Middle Bay and County Down.
- [21:29]
Tristan Hughes
It's a bit of mobility there.
- [21:31]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, which suggests mobility and perhaps also a sort of a stratum in society that may have been operating or interlinking with each other rather than with society at large. You know, some people have suggested it was a nobility or something like that, but it's difficult to know. But they are slightly elusive otherwise, you know, it's difficult. You know, in the case of other types of megalithic tombs in Ireland, they tend to occur where there is sort of farming settlement and amongst fields, in the case of cage fields in County Mayo. But the Bond Valley ones, they're found very often, not just Bone Valley, but pastichems generally. They're often found on locations like the tops of ridges or close to the tops of hills or along river valleys or something like that. They seem to have had the ability to choose where they wanted to place these monuments, which again, suggests power of some sort.
- [22:28]
Tristan Hughes
Absolutely does. And it's also very interesting. First of all, you hinted about that DNA analysis, which we will return to later on, especially with these interesting links to Irish mythology too. But does it then seem to be that early on in the story of Bruno Boyne and Newgrange, when it's initially built, do we think that these early farmers, they view this area, Moorish primarily, if not centrally, as a place for the dead, as a cemetery? I know as time goes on, it gets more complicated than that, but if they're just building these great tombs, do they think first of all that that landscape is primarily an area, what they would see as a cemetery, a very, very elaborate cemetery almost?
- [23:10]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
I think you're right. They certainly are making a statement in the landscape. That's the first thing. And in my own imagination, this is a purely personal view, you know, trying to come to terms with why these things happen, so to speak. One of the interesting things about the passage tombs is some of them occur high up on tops of hills. Baltinglass Hill in County Wicklow, for example, or Knocknorry in County Sligo. And where these tombs have been executed, there is evidence of pre tomb activity at the sites which suggests that it's not the tomb made the place sacred, that the tomb is just a particular expression of the sacredness of the site. So the way I like to see it, for what it's worth, is that I imagine this world of farming spreading and more trees being cut down and countryside being opened up, and these traditional sacred places, the nature of them and the sort of landscape context of them, if we had to put it that way, being changed by farming and sacred places almost coming under threat. And I often wonder, was the building of a megalithic tomb on these places almost a way of stabilizing the places and saying, this is a sacred place, you know, now that's just a personal sort of way of expressing it. And they may not even have thought that way, but you wonder if it was one of those impetuses that may have been going on. And this is why these monuments, they're often designed, especially passage tombs to be seen from far away. And they interlink across the country from mountaintop to mountaintop in some cases. I'm just thinking of particular cases where in the evening, maybe when the sun is beginning to drop in the sky and you're in the landscape, maybe within 10 miles of these, the mound or the cairn on top of the mountain stands out so strong, you know, and very starkly. And these were obviously designed to be seen and they obviously sent a statement.
- [25:23]
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- [26:35]
Tristan Hughes
We're about to explore that whole building process of Newgrange and other places like now and what archaeologists believe was the likely way that they built these monuments. First off Moorish, though, I must ask, do we know how long it would have taken for them back in the Stone Age, roughly, to build something like Newgrange? Because I remember going to Orkney and learning about places like Maze Howe and also people saying the, that the amount of labor needed, the amount of time needed, the whole building of the tomb itself might have been just as important as the burial because it's important to their society and it's such a huge event, a huge task.
- [27:12]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Michael J. O Kelly made an effort to try to quantify how long it would have taken, you know, and I think he had a, I think he was talking about maybe if you had a workforce of about 300, et cetera, that you would take maybe about six years to build a newgrange. I think that was something like that he gave as a figure, you know. But it's very difficult for us today I've seen, I mean, anyone who has worked in the field, so to speak, and I'm from a farming background myself as well, in addition to the archaeology, that people who work with particular types of material become very adept at handling the material. I've even seen at north, for example, where there was a lot of stone being moved around and so on by the people working on the site by hand, they became extraordinary at moving large stones around, rolling them around on boughs of trees and so forth, and I think that's one of the things to take into account. But then, as against that, they didn't have the facilities we would have today. They didn't have weed vehicles, for example, never mind anything mechanical. They didn't have horses at the time in Ireland. So they were moving the stuff without a lot of the modern facilities. And some of these stones they moved were absolutely extraordinarily large stones, which in some cases were brought from quite far away. And, you know, I always sort of think it's so funny like that, having brought these stones from wherever, you know, they arrived down there, maybe if they came along, the boy, whatever way they came along, they said, well, while we're at it, let's bring them up to the top of the hill, you know.
- [28:46]
Tristan Hughes
Yes, that's the thing. You can ferry them along the river, but then you've got to get to the top of that massive ridge.
- [28:52]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah. And indeed, I often think, and I'm straying into something slightly different, so bear with me for a second, that the journey of each of these stones must have been in itself quite a saga, you know, something that was remembered by people, you know, the actual. They must have remembered particular stones and someone's toe got crushed or whatever, you know, in the exercise, you know, that each of these stones had a story by the time it got up to the site. And there is evidence that they were locating stones in specific places, you know, very deliberately looking for particular types of stone. In the case of the Moyne Valley, they would travel quite a distance to find the stone they wanted, and then they brought. Brought that to the site and they organized the stone in the architecture, presumably in a meaningful way. So predictor types of stone tend to occur in particular places. And this suggests that stone had meaning for them. And possibly the places from which they extracted the stone had meaning as well. And in the way that you might bring material often carries this kind of significance, like people bringing water back from Lourdes or something like that, you know, that it's a material often carry significance for people or they carry stones. We discussed this actually another time, that in my own case, we're from County Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, living in County Wicklow. But it's very significant to bring a stone from West Kerry to County Wicklow. And it carries a sort of a significance because of where it's from, especially if it's from an ancestral place or something like that, that people would do things like place that on the tombs of parents, grandparents and so forth. You know, that it. And this often happens with immigrants as well. So this sort of thing that happens today, I presume the same would have gone on in the Stone Age, and stone carried a certain significance for them.
- [30:56]
Tristan Hughes
Well, let's do one particular example of this, of a particular stone that they used a lot of and kind of epitomizes that journey. Journey from source to Bruno Boyne. And let's say with the building of Newgrange. You probably know what I'm going to ask Marish, which is the Clotherhead Cliffs.
- [31:14]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yes.
- [31:15]
Tristan Hughes
What are these cliffs and how do they relate to Newgrange? And the building of Newgrange Cloverhead is.
- [31:21]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Just north of Dundalk Bay. It's on the northern side there in. On the Cardiff Peninsula. Basically, many of the stones used at New Range. The evidence seems to suggest that these are some of the larger stones that I'm speaking about. They appear to have come from Claher Head, which is quite a journey, about 30 miles or something like that, to have brought them to the Boyne Valley. I mentioned earlier there were a very large number of stones used in the Boyne Valley between all of the tombs there. But it would appear that Newgrange got the pick of the stones, because the largest curbstones, for example, they're also some of the finest stones as stones out of. Found along the curb at Newgrange.
- [32:07]
Tristan Hughes
The curb says. Yeah, you define there. So think of like a curb. They surround the perimeter of Newgrange, don't they?
- [32:13]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, this circle of. They're at the base of the cairn, so to speak. Some people said they're holding the cairn in, but I suspect their function was more, you know, ceremonial, defining this circular, more or less circular area within which the tomb was built and all of the main activity was taking place. That brings you to another angle when you're speaking about it. Maybe I'm taking you away actually, Tristan, so please pull me back. But when they were building these tombs, it began with the alignment of the tomb. And I think that's an important point.
- [32:48]
Tristan Hughes
To make because that's a good starting point.
- [32:50]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yes, yeah. They had to know in advance the direction in which the passage was facing. Because in the case of Newgrange, they were facing the passage towards this spot on the horizon where the sun would rise at mid winter.
- [33:05]
Tristan Hughes
Ah, the winter solstice link.
- [33:06]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Okay, yeah. And this was their first, so to speak, that line was important to them. And then the actual enclosing of this circular space or this more or less circular space was also, for some reason important. And they were the two key spatial things, so to speak, in the layout of the tombs. And everything seems to have begun from there.
- [33:28]
Tristan Hughes
Right, so that makes sense. So they kind of plot out the position where the central chamber will be, as you say, to align with the solstice. And we'll get more to that then the whole perimeter. It's almost kind of like Stone Age surveyors kind of thing, isn't it? You're planning it all out and then they go and get the stones from places like Cloth ahead. And do we know much about that process? Because to me, I love logistics stuff, whether it's military or. Or building or whatever from ancient history. Do we know, get any sense of that whole logistical process of the ferrying of those great stones from place like the Clough Head Cliff and then back to Newgrange?
- [34:05]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
It's assumed that the river was used as a way of moving them and maybe the sea as well. But this is a precarious business with very large stones. And the other thing that I remember, some years ago, some colleagues, they conducted a survey of the riverbed along the River Boyne, because the assumption was if so many large stones were moved, somewhere along the way, one had to be lost.
- [34:30]
Tristan Hughes
Must be some shipwrecks.
- [34:31]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or two or whatever. So they were checking if anything like that could be seen. What they found were actually a very large number of circular stones which turned out to be tires. This is all the killjoy. There seems to have been nothing lost along the way. So if whether this is a sign that they were particularly good in terms of how they managed all this process, or maybe it suggests that it wasn't along the river at all, that it might be some other way they came, we don't really know, but we know that they got the stone from A to B. It was quite a challenge because they either had to go around Dundalk Bay or go across Dundalk Bay or something like that. They had to find some way of getting the material in, you know, so it was a tricky process. And These were enormous stones, and then they had to deal with the rivers along the way, whether they brought them along the rivers or across the rivers, but it was massive, and this had to be done with. In the case of the Boyne Valley, I count hundreds and hundreds of large stones, each traveling individually and also to extract the rocks.
- [35:41]
Tristan Hughes
I mean, there's no metals at this time. So is it just hammering the rock with an even bigger rock kind of thing? Hammerstones again and again and again.
- [35:48]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Hammerstones. And presumably using fire and water, maybe to break them as well. You know, this. But then you have to use this sort of activity carefully because you don't want to damage the actual stone you're using or leave that all cracked and so forth, you know. So they seem to have known what they were at. But then everything about these people tells me that they knew what they were at, because the whole logistics, as you say, of bringing these large stones and extracting them and placing them in position and so forth, that was an enormous exercise. The strange thing about it is that I always think that if you take a pebble from the seaside, a small pebble that's maybe be 5 millimeters across, or at most, maybe 7 or 8 millimeters across, and now, without modern technology, you now have the job of actually boring a hole through the center of that pebble in order to make a bead. And I think that's an extraordinary sort of a piece of activity, so to speak, by someone back in the Stone Age. And they have done this repeatedly. So presumably they had technique. I think if you place that, then onto a larger scale with the megalithic tombs, they knew how to handle stone. But what's maybe spectacular and maybe remarkable about all of this is that going back to who they were and so forth, we have no evidence that these people lived in strong houses of any type or stone houses. Even in the case of Ireland, they seem to have lived in relatively flimsy. Flimsy buildings, as far as we can make out. And yet they went from that to building these enormous megalithic structures. There's a sort of dichotomy, so to speak, in the actual daily life of these people as we know it or as we don't know it. And then these remarkable structures they've left behind.
- [37:45]
Tristan Hughes
Let's get back towards the monument. Let's say they have been able to bring some of these curbstones back. I might also have to ask the question, do we think potentially when they're starting to arrange some of these stones, we'll get back to the curbstones in a moment. But let's say stones for the creating of the chamber itself or the roof. Could we imagine the equivalent of Stone Age scaffolding or ramps or stuff like that being used to try and help them?
- [38:09]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
I think so. They certainly would have used, I think, these types of things, because they couldn't otherwise have done it. I think, you know, certainly they were using ramps. I suspect the other thing is that that in other places in Brittany and so forth, where they were dealing with large stones, I'm thinking of the Table of Marchand there, where there was a certain alignment there beside it, that you're able to see evidence of them dealing with the stone, so to speak, where, in the case of these passage tombs, they didn't leave traces behind of the types of ramps or whatever they were using to build these monuments. I've seen various. Various attempts to explain how they might have done it. You know, as you say, scaffolding, ramps. Some people have suggested that the interior might have been filled with something like sand and then the thing built on top of it. But I always think that all of that is very well. But ultimately someone had to take away these things, this scaffolding or sand, and you needed to predict what would happen at that stage. I think, and I think that's the genius of these people, that in the case of the corbel roof at Newgrange, as you know, corbling. Yes, this high corbelled roof ending with a flat stone across the top, the way this corbelling was done is that first of all, the stones leaned slightly outwards and downwards, so there's a slight angle in them, and the weight of each of these stones was behind, so to speak. So when you're inside a new range, you see what looked like boulders, maybe, you know, less than a meter across and. And maybe 20, 30 meters or centimeters or something like that deep or whatever. But in fact, this is misleading because what actually happens is we're seeing in the case of this corbling in each case, the front of a much larger stone and the bulk of the weight of that stone is behind and starts sloping slightly downwards so that each layer of corbelling is put up in this way, and then it's the weight of the cairn behind it that keeps this corbelling in place as it gradually moves inwards to oversee the space of the care of the chamber. And then at the very top, this flat stone is put across, which I suppose emphasize the fact that this is not an arch but a corbel system, which is slightly different building technology. What is remarkable is that in the case of both Newgrange and Nowth, these corbel chambers have stayed intact for the past 5,000 years and more.
- [40:43]
Tristan Hughes
It's absolutely fascinating. That and the corbelling technique is absolutely remarkable.
- [40:48]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
They use a sort of. I can't quite remember the materials they used, but it was some, you know, a mixture of various things to actually seal the spaces. So that. And they also had little channels on tops of these corbels at the back, so the water ran off them. So they went to quite some trouble to waterproof them in those cases.
- [41:09]
Tristan Hughes
So maybe for some 5,000 years or so before O'Kelly and his excavations, earlier in the century, maybe, you rarely, if ever, had water seeping into that central chamber. That's quite a fascination.
- [41:20]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Exactly. Yes. Yeah, yeah.
- [41:22]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, wow. Okay. That's extraordinary.
- [41:32]
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- [41:49]
Tristan Hughes
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- [41:53]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
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- [42:45]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Absolutely. And the three recesses, again, not bring me back to the people view onto Tristan, but just to highlight the fact that the three recesses are also organized in a particular way. Obviously it creates a cruciform effect, but generally in these passage tombs, the right hand recess is given preeminence in terms of size, ornamentation, elaboration, and sometimes the contents of that side. It's an interesting dimension of passage tombs, this emphasis in Ireland on the right hand side, the preeminence of the right hand side, because this is a cross cultural phenomenon. It's found in many cultures, including modern Christian culture in Europe. Right. Is associated with the best things in many ways. At the right hand of God. This type of thing, right is righteousness. It's always a metaphor for something better. And in many languages, including Irish and English, even the terminology for right and left and in other languages they're often associated with goodness and are more positive and less positive things. This metaphorical use of right and left of the two sides. So they seem to have used it as well for some purpose. Of course, the problem is we don't quite know what it means, but everything about it suggests that the right hand side was seen as the more positive side side.
- [44:07]
Tristan Hughes
Well, talking about that kind of mystery element to it, we've. We've still got a couple of things to cover with the whole kind of architecture of Newgrange and that time period. And one of the things, it kind of goes to three again with certain cases, isn't it, that it's not just a plain interior chamber. And the same with some of the curbstones as well. Because you also find rock art and Maharish. What types of rock art are we talking about?
- [44:33]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
About? It's a very distinctive type that's found in Ireland, made up almost universally of abstract motifs, geometric, schematic, type of designs. Circles, spirals, zigzags, lozenges, you know, cup marks of course are called, but these are universal, so to speak, cup marks. But yeah, it's that type of thing now. It's a. It's part of a much wider European rock art tradition. You know that particularly in I. The Iberian Peninsula, you get a type of stone or a type of decoration on stone out in the landscape, in the open air that is very similar to actually some of the megalithic art in the passage tombs in Ireland. In fact, I would suggest that some of the passage tomb art in Ireland is much closer to that open air rock art in Iberia in some cases than it is to other passage tomb traditions in Europe. Europe.
- [45:33]
Tristan Hughes
And Maurice, is this so called Atlantic rock art?
- [45:35]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Atlantic rock art? Very much so, yeah. When you think of Atlantic rock art, you're thinking of the type of rock art is found in Yorkshire and Northumberland and then in the Galician Spain and so forth. It's quite common.
- [45:51]
Tristan Hughes
Kilmartin Glen.
- [45:52]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kilmartin Glen, exactly. Now that's a more restricted form of art than what's found in the pastichums. The pastichum's designs are slightly different. They're actually more sophisticated, you know, in terms of aesthetics and so forth. You know, you think of the New Grange entrance stone and also some of the megalithic art in Brittany. And other places like Gavrinus, et cetera. You know, it's actually quite sophisticated type of artwork, and they seem in some cases to almost move away from the geometric designs. In the case of Knouth, particularly in the Boyne Valley, where they seem to kind of get carried away with making designs and running along the shoulders of stones and things like that, and they sort of lose touch with the geometric sort of origins of the artwork, which is very interesting.
- [46:43]
Tristan Hughes
It is. And almost as a teaser, you and I, in our upcoming documentary on Prehistoric island, part of that, we explore that rock art outside Naoth, and I think now is like the richest concentration of megalithic rock art in Europe. It's an astonishing tomb, and there is still some on Newgrange as well. If I bring you back to Newgrange, you mentioned the entrance stone there, which for our listeners, that was perhaps the best of the curbstones in the fact that it's right outside the main entrance to Newgrange, and it is covered in spirals and beautiful rock art, including a particular type which I'm sure is perhaps well, the best known, isn't it, because of its later legacy, this idea of the triple spiral.
- [47:24]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yes.
- [47:25]
Tristan Hughes
Which seems to become, dare I say, it has in late history, become associated with the word Celtic and kind of a Celtic symbol, even though it's much older than that. The famous triple spiral motif.
- [47:36]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Absolutely, yes. And, of course, it's repeated then in the case of Newgrange inside, in the end chamber as well, on one of the stones there. There's a very famous example of it there as well. It's an extraordinary feature of the megalithic art in the Boyne Valley. The richest concentration is to be found at North. And in fact, I always think of north as this place where they're developing the art and, you know, they're experimenting and pushing the boundaries. But probably the finest example of megalithic art in the Bohin Valley is that Newgrange entrance stone. And very much not far behind it is Curbstone 52 at the back of Newgrange. And then There is curbstone 67 at Newgrange. These are the three big decorated curbstones. There are other decorated curbstones in Newgrange, but these three stand apart. And what's interesting about them is that if you were to take away those three from Newgrange, you would say that the megalithic art at New Range, especially on the curbs, is not in the same league as the megalithic art at north, you know, but these ones lift Newgrange, and actually, actually Curbstone one The entrance stone and the one directly across from it, Curbstone 52. And remember that these are the ones that are on the axis of the rising sun. And you know, if you drew a line through the site and through the passage, and these are probably the two finest amongst the finest pieces of megalithic art in the Boyan Valley.
- [49:09]
Tristan Hughes
There's one part of the construction of Newgrange that I'm sure many people listening to this who have visited Newgrange will be maybe shouting to their podcasts into their audio app, say, what about this? What about this part? And so I must ask about this part as well, briefly, and it is interesting, which is that massive quartz wall, Murraysch around the outside, that kind of white wall of Newgrange that is one of the most, I mean, eye catching parts of photos and images of Newgrange today. How accurate do we think that is? Do we think that was part of the original build?
- [49:41]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Well, I think to start, if Newgrange had been excavated in recent times and were then reconstituted, so to speak, or reins, which would not have that white quartz wall. Because the system nowadays, or the philosophy behind reinstating monuments after excavation is that you put it back the way you found it. You don't try to interpret how it might have looked originally on the basis that the whole life story of the site is important. But at the time there were very good reasons for reconstituting it in this way. At the time, this was back in the 60s and 70s that O'Kelly did do. He conducted engineering experimen with engineers on how the wall might have stood and fallen and so on. And he related that to what he found on the ground. And he certainly found all of that quartz on the ground more or less in front of the curb at Newgrange. And the way it was sort of wedged in a sort of wedge shape, so to speak, thinning out as it went out, suggested it had fallen from above to him. Now it's very controversial and people have queried and questioned it and so on. The interesting thing is that as that quartz wall has become so much part of Newgrange in the consciousness of people across the world at this stage, that probably it has to be left there, you know, that it was of its time, it was a way of restoring a monument at the time. And in Pharos, all of this quartz was found there and indeed those rounded stones that are found amongst the quartz, they were all found on site, on the ground in front of the caravan. The one thing that might be of interest is that O'Kelly did point out that he did find stones on tops of the curbstones. In an excavation I conducted myself at Knock Rowan, County Kilkenny. There was one particular curbstone that had split, you know, and the front half, it had fallen forward rather like a kebab, sort of. And the filling of the space between the front half of that curb sawn and the back half of it was all clean white quar quartz, which suggested to me that the quartz also may have fallen from above somewhere. It couldn't jump up from the ground and jump into this space, so to speak. You know something, it seems to have fallen from above. Now, that doesn't mean it was a vertical wall. I think that's the most controversial aspect of the new range reconstruction, is that the wall is so high, it's not quite vertical, but it's very close to being vertical. The suggestion would be that if there were some quartz on top of the curbstones, it may not have been as sheer as that, so to speak.
- [52:28]
Tristan Hughes
I'm glad that we mentioned it because, you know, it would be wrong of us not to. And thank you for highlighting that. Maybe courts like with the curbstones, that particular stone had a real significance for these people. This feels slightly unfair because I feel the legacy of Newgrange is deserving of a full podcast episode in its own right. Moorish. But as time goes on, the Stone Age goes on, then you get the Bronze Age and the whole, whole area. In this bend in the bond, the Brune Boyne, comes this sacred landscape full of timber circles and henges and people venturing there from far and wide. I mean, Maris, give us an insight into that legacy of Newgrange and what follows. I mean, I've got even in my notes here, some Roman coins were found there too. It's quite extraordinary.
- [53:13]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Exactly. And an aspect of the Boyne Valley that maybe was understated in the past, but has become clearer in more recent times, that these massive henge like monuments that were built in the valley below Newgrange, they would have involved a similar amount of labor and input of resources, but in timber, as the actual megalithic tombs had. They were built perhaps somewhere, you know, maybe some hundreds of years after the megalithic tombs. But they do indicate, as you say, that this was a very sacred landscape with a lot of activity going on there, but then it runs out, then it just dies. After the beginning of the Bronze Age, you know, when I say dies, that you have no more. This massive input of activity and construction and so on in the Boyne Valley. And there seems to have been some sort of a lull through the Bronze Age in some ways, you know. But then in the early centuries ad, for some reason, there's material from Roman Britain is placed in front of the tomb at Newgrange in the form of coins, gold coins for about the third or fourth century. I think they're third and fourth century, maybe there's a pair of bronze brooches from, I think, the third century. There were some neck ornaments and other things of gold. And this material that seems to have come from provincial, the edge of the Roman Empire, Britain presumed to be Britain. And they're placed at those standing stones in front of the entrance to Newgrange. It was appear. So this seems to indicate some sort of a significance for the site. And it's part of an upsurge of activity that took place at these megalithic tombs during the later Iron Age. This is about between three and three and a half thousand years after they were actually built in the first place. So for some reason, people are coming back. There were burials being placed at many of these sites. We have found, you know, fairly consistently, you find evidence of Iron Age activity at these sites, sites as if they were still important and mentioning the Roman material. There was also Roman material at the Hill of Tara around a passage tomb there, which is known as the Mound of the Hostages, another very rich passage tomb in terms of its contents and so on. And there as well, beside it, at the Wrath of the Synods, which is the site excavated by the British Israelites. But that's a slight distraction. There were found actually some glass ropes and ceramics that have been identified as being largely drinking ware and as if banqueting was taking place or something like that at these sites. So between burial banqueting, the laying of votive offerings or something like that, they seem to have attracted people in the Iron Age. Now, what the motivation for that was is very difficult to know.
- [56:18]
Tristan Hughes
It's still interesting. And actually it leads me into a fun little statement to almost before we completely wrap this up, there is sometimes that that common phrase, in fact, said that Cleopatra is living, the famous Cleopatra is living closer to us than the time of when the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. Well, those coins, those Roman coins were left at Newgrange closer to us today than when Newgrange was originally built, which I think is a nice statement to kind of testament to that legacy part of it as well. I mean, Maharish, I could ask you about so much more. Sadly, we don't have time to explore a bit more that DNA link and mythology. But I will ask you personally, what excites you the most about Newgrange? For a site that's 5,000 years old, it still seems to be one shrouded in mystery. That is, you know, more and more evidence is coming to light.
- [57:08]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Yeah, I think that's exactly the point, that the more we delve into these monuments, the more we realize how little we have known about them and how much more there is to be had. I mean, the example of the DNA was a good example, but also we have found, for example, that in examining material very closely that's coming from these sites, that they seem to have treated human bone in very distinctive ways. You know, it wasn't just a matter of cremating the person and putting them into the tomb. There's evidence that, you know, there was mixing of bones going on. There's evidence that the artifacts that are found with them were not simply artifacts they happened to be wearing, so therefore ended up sort of almost accidentally in the tombs. There's evidence that certainly in some of the cases that when they burned, cremated the remains, some people have often suggested the bone and antler pins were keeping cloaks closed or whatever. You know, experiments have shown that if these had been on the body when they were cremated, they would have disappeared, they would not have survived the burning. So it seems like they were placed into the ashes at a later stage because they are charred, but they're not burned out away completely. There's also evidence, for example, that beads and pendants that were used at some of the tombs, they're made from stone that does not occur locally, but is brought from far away. So in the case of Tariff, for example, example, some of the pendants there are made from serpentine, and serpentine is not found locally in the County Mead area, but comes from the west of Ireland. And similarly at Knock Roan, County Kilkenny, the beads there, when we examined them in detail, the majority of the beads are very large. Yeah, the majority were made from steatite, which is a type of stone that's not again found in southeast Ireland, but actually comes again from the northwest, from Galway, Donegal, Gall, Mayo, that type of area. So there's a lot to be discovered. We've also found that the most common artifact may well be in these tombs, a bone tubular bead that has been really just mentioned in, you know, but hasn't really been examined, but has been examined more recently by Dr. Ruth Carden, and she has found that this bead is generally made from bird bone, very elaborately carved at the terminals both inside and out. But also that some of them are made from deer antler and that to make a tubular bead of deer antler was very elaborate process involving cutting off a little rectangle of this antler from the outer part, somehow or other softening it, carving it around into a cylinder and using it. And then we find these because you can identify them very easily with the sort of gap along one side of them where the two pieces came together. So we could go on and on about this. In other words, everything is very elaborate that's done in them and we're, we're just really finding out about these people.
- [60:10]
Tristan Hughes
Well, you know, this is great in its own right because it means we could do follow up episodes on Prehistoric island and Knockro like place where you've done your excavations as well in the future too. Maris and of course Naoth and Douth, two other great tombs that we mentioned in passing. But obviously the focus was on Newgrange and I mean Maris. This has been an hour filled with so much information about Newgrange, Bruno Bo and a Neolithic Ireland. It's been such a pleasure. Great to see you again after our featuring together for this newly released history hit documentary on prehistoric Ireland. And it just goes to me to say Marish, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
- [60:49]
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Thank you very much Tristan, have enjoyed us.
- [60:55]
Tristan Hughes
Well there you go. There was Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan talking all things Newgrange, this wonder of Stone Age Ireland. Thank you for listening. If you'd like more information about Newgrange or the landscape it's within the Brunebogne then do also check out our new documentary on history hit presented by myself, also featuring Morrish called Prehistoric Secrets of the Stone Age. That focus focuses on Brune Bogne and great monuments like Newgrange. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips then be sure to follow me on Instagram Ncients Tristan, that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.
- [61:58]
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