Video: The Mounds at Brú na Bóinne
A look inside the ancient passage tombs of Ireland's Brú na Bóinne.
Location: Brú na Bóinne, Co. Meath, Ireland
Just a short drive north from Dublin, tucked into a bend in the River Boyne, stand three large mounds older than Stonehenge or the pyramids at Giza. They were built by a civilization of the Late Stone Age, along with dozens more monuments nearby, around 5,200 years ago. The mounds, Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange, are commonly referred to as passage tombs. They may, however, have also served a more ritual purpose as astronomical calendars and holy sites.
For thousands of years, the mounds stood as a mystery even to the people of Ireland. Their builders likely only used them for a few hundred years before disappearing into time. But the mounds and standing stones remained to intrigue generations. The Brú na Bóinne, as the entire site is called, appears regularly in Irish myth, folklore, and its pre-Christian religion. The Tuatha Dé Danann, the old gods of Ireland, were said to have built the mounds and ruled from them. Later, with the coming of humans and Christianity, they retreated into the earth.
Brú na Bóinne sat in plain sight, in bustling farmlands, for many centuries. Then, in the 1960s, renewed interest in the site sparked new excavations and study. For the first time in hundreds of years, people witnessed light entering Newgrange’s inner chamber at the Winter Solstice. Similar alignments were found in Knowth and Dowth as well. The white-stone retaining wall at Newgrange was built at this time—supposedly a reconstruction based on the white quartz scattered around it. Knowth, meanwhile, shows a different interpretation of the stones as a sort of pavement.
Today, Brú na Bóinne is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a place that has held significant meaning for local people for over 5,000 years. Visitors to the site can still admire the art and industry of a Neolithic civilization. A lucky few visitors are even granted access to Newgrange for the Winter Solstice. Check out this video below to learn more about the site and get a peep inside yourself.
References
“Brú Na Bóinne - Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne.” UNESCO, UNESCO, whc.unesco.org/en/list/659.
“Brú Na Bóinne.” World Heritage Ireland, Dept. Environment, Heritage & Local Government, www.worldheritageireland.ie/bru-na-boinne. Accessed 12 Oct. 2020.
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