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Le Grand Tour, Day Three
16 years ago
IRELAND
Today was spent on a day trip to the complex of Brú na Bóinne in County Meath, visiting the two most famous neolithic passage tombs in Europe.
Newgrange
and
Knowth
These places are older than the pyramids! They were both amazing. I'd already seen, in the National Museum on Saturday, the Knowth Mace Head (possibly the most valuable mace in the world, Exto!), without knowing where it came from. It's an amazing thing, not only thousands of years old and very beautiful in its own right, but extraordinary for being carved out of flint, for God's sake. Flint doesn't carve, it fractures and flakes. Modern techniques probably couldn't make this thing; the patience and total mastery of skill of the Stone Age artist who produced it are pushing the edge of unbelievable. And it's only as big as a large egg.
Unfortunately the passages of Knowth are closed due to being very unsafe (there was actually an engineer in one of them at the time, doing another survey) so we couldn't see the giant stone basin that was the ceremonial center of the tumulus. We know it was important because it was the first thing put on the site - and we know that because it's too big to fit through the corridor! The builders wanted to make it impossible for anyone to remove it, and five thousand years later it's still exactly where they put it.
The tours were very well run, and the guides were great. There was a lot of Irish humour. "Now remember - that big stone will still be there when you come out, so don't hit your head on it then, either."
(four people hit their heads on it on the way out, including the mid-teens guy who'd asked the guide how many people hit their head on it)
Also, the Irish countryside around there is fricken' gorgeous. You can see for miles from the top of the Knowth tomb. It's also full of animals: cows, sheep and horses grazing, a pair of vulture-sized birds of prey wheeling and sporting way high up, a flock of sparrows diving in and out of the tomb-entrance at Newgrange...
There was no time to sketch, alas, but I came away with lots of pictures that may serve as bases for drawing, and which I'll link to as soon as I've uploaded them.
Today was spent on a day trip to the complex of Brú na Bóinne in County Meath, visiting the two most famous neolithic passage tombs in Europe.
Newgrange
and
Knowth
These places are older than the pyramids! They were both amazing. I'd already seen, in the National Museum on Saturday, the Knowth Mace Head (possibly the most valuable mace in the world, Exto!), without knowing where it came from. It's an amazing thing, not only thousands of years old and very beautiful in its own right, but extraordinary for being carved out of flint, for God's sake. Flint doesn't carve, it fractures and flakes. Modern techniques probably couldn't make this thing; the patience and total mastery of skill of the Stone Age artist who produced it are pushing the edge of unbelievable. And it's only as big as a large egg.
Unfortunately the passages of Knowth are closed due to being very unsafe (there was actually an engineer in one of them at the time, doing another survey) so we couldn't see the giant stone basin that was the ceremonial center of the tumulus. We know it was important because it was the first thing put on the site - and we know that because it's too big to fit through the corridor! The builders wanted to make it impossible for anyone to remove it, and five thousand years later it's still exactly where they put it.
The tours were very well run, and the guides were great. There was a lot of Irish humour. "Now remember - that big stone will still be there when you come out, so don't hit your head on it then, either."
(four people hit their heads on it on the way out, including the mid-teens guy who'd asked the guide how many people hit their head on it)
Also, the Irish countryside around there is fricken' gorgeous. You can see for miles from the top of the Knowth tomb. It's also full of animals: cows, sheep and horses grazing, a pair of vulture-sized birds of prey wheeling and sporting way high up, a flock of sparrows diving in and out of the tomb-entrance at Newgrange...
There was no time to sketch, alas, but I came away with lots of pictures that may serve as bases for drawing, and which I'll link to as soon as I've uploaded them.
I guess stone age stonecutters got used to that rock so much, they kind of didn't take time to try out other stuff. Not like they'd need to, anyway. Apparently, they knew what they were doing.
Awesome.