
If it wasn’t there before you.........
There’s a geological explanation for this natural geometric wonder; so not the patio of a giant, then... just the Earth a’doodling. Brilliant.
If it wasn’t there before you.........
There’s a geological explanation for this natural geometric wonder; so not the patio of a giant, then... just the Earth a’doodling. Brilliant.
The “Honeycomb” at the Giant’s Causeway.
Human remains dating back almost 4,000 years have been uncovered on Rathlin Island off the County Antrim coast
More details from the BBC here.
Rosie Cowan, Ireland correspondent
Monday January 13, 2003
The Guardian
Road excavations in Northern Ireland have unearthed what appears to be evidence of the island’s earliest settlers and first farmers.
As the diggers moved in to work on the Toome bypass, outside Toomebridge in Co Antrim, archaeologists found more than 10,000 artefacts, including stone age axe heads and flints from 9,400 years ago, through to bronze age times about 4,500 years ago.
Paul McCooey, of Northern Archaeological Consultancy, said the area was particularly significant because it was a rare transitional site, charting the change from the hunter gatherer life to farming, and providing a fascinating insight into how our ancestors lived.
“From the material we’ve uncovered so far, it seems farming in Ireland started about 200 years earlier than had previously been supposed,” said Mr McCooey, who heads a team of 17 archaeologists working on the site.
“These people came to Ireland several thousand years after the last ice age, paddling across the Irish sea from Scotland in dugout canoes covered in skins. They were hunter gatherers at first. Then they appear to have settled on a drumlin [a hill formed by glacial activity] surrounded by fields which would have flooded when it rained.”
The size of the houses – one was 12 metres in diameter – suggested that the settlement became permanent, rather than being a nomadic hunting camp. The inhabitants are thought to have fished and grown cereal crops.
Mr McCooey’s team also found the remains of bronze age cooking pits, also used for bathing and religious rituals. They were lined with clay or wood to make them waterproof.
“One of the most thrilling finds has been a two-bladed bronze age knife, the size of a man’s hand, carved from flint,” he said. “It’s extremely rare and beautiful. I’ve never seen one outside a textbook before.”
Archaeologists are flocking to the site. The Ulster Museum in Belfast is keen to give the artefacts a home when excavation have finished next month. Mr McCooey wants to stage an exhibition in Toome first. He would like some pieces to remain permanently on display locally.
He insisted that his dig was not holding up progress on the bypass.
“Cooperation with the construction workers has been excellent,” he said. “We simply work on different parts of the site, but they are very interested in what we are doing and when there is a big find, everyone cranes round for a look.”
Blades and pottery unearthed during work on the new Toome Bypass reveal invaluable information about the lives of ancient peoples, according to archaeologists who have examined the artefacts.
The find is the most significant discovery in the province since a 4,000-year-old grave was discovered during an excavation in the ruins of Newtownstewart Castle in County Tyrone in 1999.
Paul McCooey, who has examined the latest find, said their discovery was of immense importance. “The wealth of archaeology uncovered provides a fascinating insight into the lives of our ancestors,” he said.
A special team of experts has been appointed by the Roads Service to carry out a full examination of the site where a 3.5km dual carriageway is being built to ease chronic traffic congestion.
More than 8,000 pieces of flint, including small microlith blades and bigger tools used for hunting and fishing, have been discovered.
The finds range from Mesolithic (7,000-3,500BC) and Neolithic (4,000-2,500BC) to the Bronze Age (2,500-1,200BC) and right up to some tools from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mr McCooey added: “This area would have been an ideal home for our early ancestors. “These hunter gatherers concentrated their activities on waterways, foraging on the shores of seas, lakes and rivers.”
Other archaeological sites at Castleroe and Newferry have confirmed Mesolithic man migrated up the River Bann to Lough Neagh.
“The family groups lived a nomadic lifestyle in houses made from animal skins spread over a bowl-shaped timer frame, indicated by traces of a circular pattern of postholes found at Toome,” added Mr McCooey.
“The finds at Toome also include flint tools and shards of decorated pottery from the New Stone Age, or the Neolithic period.
“Neolithic man built more permanent rectangular dwellings whose foundations show up as linear gullies with stone foundations packed with organic material.”
from BBC News website, 8th Jan 2003
Mr. W. J. Knowles, M.R.I.A., secretary for county Antrim to the Council of the present Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, states that he knew instances where the posessor of a few flint implements refused to part with them, as he found it more profitable to hire them out to neighbours, for the purpose of curing cattle, than it would be to sell them. Theis writer also remarks that, in reference to the employment of flint arrow-heads and spear-heads in curing cattle, he received recently an account from an aged man, who lives not far from Ballymena, of how the ceremony of cattle-curing was carried on in his young days:-
“He had a neighbour, a very respectable farmer, who was a cow-doctor, and who had a considerable number of beautiful flint arrow-heads, by means of which he effected cures in the case of cattle which were ill. This cow-doctor invariably found that the animal was either ‘elf-shot’ or ‘dinted,’ or it might be suffering from both troubles. When ‘elf-shot,’ I suspect the arrow had pierced the hide; and when ‘dinted,’ I imagine there was only an indentation, which the doctor could feel as easily as the holes. When he was called in to see a cow which was ill, he would feel the hide all over, and find, or pretend to find, holes or indentations, and would call on anyone present to feel them. He would then assure the owner that he would very soon cure the cow. My informant told me that the man’s usual expression when he found the holes was, in his own local language, ‘Begor, we hae found the boy noo,’ meaning that he had found the cause of the beast’s ailment. Some gruel would now have to be prepared, into which he would put a few of his arrow-heads, a piece of silver, usually a sixpence, and he would also add some sooty matter which he had previously scraped from the bottom of the pot. When all had been boiled well together, and was ready for use, he would take a mouthful and blow it into the animal’s ears, another mouthful and blow it over her back, and then he would give the remainder to the cow to drink, and would go away, assuring the owner that she would soon be better. I understand he was generally successful in effecting cures, and was held in high estimation as a cow-doctor. My informant said he was often sent for by Lord Mountcashel’s agent, when he lived in Galgorm Castle, to prescribe for cattle which were ill. There must, however, have been sceptics in those days, as I am told that the poor cow-doctor was often jocularly asked to examine a cow that was in perfectly good health, and that there was considerable merriment when he pronounced her to be both ‘elf-shot’ and ‘dinted’. ”
From Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland‘ by W.G. Wood-Martin (1902).
An interesting section follows about the market in passing off faked arrow-heads as the real thing.