— Musings —02.06.2016 10:30 AM
This is where I was a week ago today
It is older than Stonehenge. Any guesses what it is?
— Musings —02.06.2016 10:30 AM
It is older than Stonehenge. Any guesses what it is?
Hadrian’s Wall, 122 AD
Stonehenge is WAAAAY older than Hadrian’s Wall!
Thanks for the clarification, SG. I guess that reinforces why my son has a degree in history, and I wallow in somewhat blissful ignorance.
The world’s oldest and largest bocce ball?
New Grange, with that strangely reconstructed wall of quartz rocks. Did you go inside?
Yep. And they sweat the wall wasn’t reconstructed – that it’s been there for 5,000 years.
5000 years since the 1960s. A lot of archaeologists would argue that the reconstruction is badly wrong.
My god, the grass really is greener on the other side.
I just got major lawn envy.
If the operators told you New Grange was not reconstructed, they were fibbing and more than a bit.
” The current shape of the mound – There was much controversy over the reconstruction of the structure, especially the white quartz wall on top of the South-East sector of the kerb, which was based on the position of the white quartz layers found during excavations between 1962 and 1975. The eventual reconstruction is an interpretation of remains from a totally collapsed site. The shape of the front is also not authentic, but was deliberately left indented to emphasise the entrance. The darker square-stones in the wall surrounding the entrance are also not authentic. Similarly, the kerb-stones have been placed into the mound, and under a concrete sill ‘to protect them’. It is these changes which have given the structure the ‘modern’ feel it has today.”
There is a photo of the unreconstructed site. It is unrecognizable. http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Images/countries/Irish%20pic/newgrange%20old1.jpg
An uncharitable observer might conclude New Grange is a trap set for tourists.
Wow – the guy was totally emphatic. Said we were “simplistic,” in fact to suggest it wasn’t ancient.
Much more fascinating in its original condition. They should’ve left it alone.
Actually the rock looks a lot like my first kidney stone and it felt like it was that big too.
Not to worry sir. The Disneyfication of history is a constant feature of the tourism industry. The original site is legit BUT your people (and I might add mine) arrived in Eire circa 500BC from the sunny Algarve coast of Portugal and exterminated the then-installed first wave Neolithic pastoralists. My guys made it to Argyll in southwestern Scotland circa 300AD in the DalRiata expansion following the departure of the Romans. Been there ever since…. making trouble and inventing things 🙂
If you want authentic and not reconstructed pre-Gael installations, you have to go to the Orkneys (the Skara Brae site is exemplary) or look at the Pictish inscribed stones in eastern Scotland. They were there, they were legit, but they got pushed by the Gaelic wave from Iberia. By 1200AD there was nothing left of the original Neolithic settlers from the Middle East, even on the y-dna genetic front. Bronze Age battery in spades did them in.
The first fortress against the coming zombie apocalypse that, unfortunately forgot about the door. The designer is under the bigger rock.