Look on the bright side
AS IT has done intermittently for the last 5,000 years, the arrival of the winter solstice on December 21 will bring together a disparate group of people to Co Meath to celebrate the end of the darkest days of winter. They will re-enact a ritual at Newgrange that began 600 years before the famous pyramids at Giza were erected, and 1,000 years before the great rocks at Stonehenge were heaved into position. Newgrange has long been associated with the mythical Tuatha De Danann, is mentioned in the Fionn mac Cumhaill story of The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne, and there are legends that the kings of Tara were buried here 2,000 years after it was built.
Perhaps the celebration of the winter solstice at the megalithic tomb is the only ritual that can claim such a long ancestral lineage, while still retaining a symbolic meaning relevant today.
In our industrialised world, the seasons have become an almost abstract concept. Changes in nature, such as a leaf fall or the first green shoots of spring, are a backdrop to our lives but the changing of the seasons brings little alteration to the temperature of our houses, the regularity of our food supplies, or our ability to move around.
Yet for our neolithic ancestors, who depended on primitive agriculture and hunting, the end of the darkest days of winter was an important moment. Perhaps it signalled a big exhalation of breath as a long period of deprivation, confinement, cold and hunger finally began to wane and the brighter days of spring appeared on the horizon.
But who exactly were these shadowy figures who left no written record and whose motives and desires are obscured by time? And what can Newgrange tell us about their lives and belief systems?
The first thing that Newgrange suggests is that our early ancestors were not lacking in ambition and verve. The monument consists of a large, roughly circular cairn covered with grass and about 0.5 hectares in size.
It is estimated to weigh 200,000 tonnes with much of the stone retrieved from the nearby Boyne River. A chambered passage reaches approximately one third of the way into the mound, and, remarkably, its ceiling, which was built from overlapped layers of rocks which were then sealed with a capstone, is still waterproof.
In a time before iron, the erection of such a structure, which is so dramatic in scope, yet precise enough to capture a beam of sunlight, required precise observation and astounding workmanship. It is, in the words of MJ O’Kelly, who discovered the light box and reinterpreted the site in the 1960s, the “cathedral of the megalithic.”
Archaeologist Geraldine Stout has written several books on the subject and is one of the foremost authorities on the Brú na Bóinne world heritage site, which is dominated by the three impressive monuments of Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth. The Knowth site alone contains 200 decorated stones, which form a third of the megalithic art found to date in western Europe.
Stout says that Newgrange was first and foremost a burial site. “The type of passage tomb we find at Newgrange was being built across Europe at the time. Basins were used to hold bodies and there are more of those at Newgrange than in other sites, although we believe most of the bones were subsequently scattered or removed.
“I believe that it was probably used to bury important people in the community and the presence of these three passage tombs in this small area gives an indication of its importance.”
Others, such as Irish-American author Martin Brennan, give more emphasis to the astronomical functions of the site and see Newgrange as being more like a temple that would have had a number of functions.
O’Kelly spoke of the tomb as a temple where the sprits of the dead resided, carefully protected from the outside world. What is agreed by all, however, is that this was no ordinary burial site — more Christchurch cathedral than parish church — and was important on a national scale, and may also have been of huge importance in a European context. A complex structure of this type requires a huge commitment of communal resources and was not an enterprise to be undertaken lightly.
“These people were probably the first sedentary farmers, which gave them the time and space to build monuments of this type,” Stout says. “It must have been a communal effort and it suggests that someone was holding the reins of power. Newgrange includes quartz from Wicklow and granite boulders from the Mourne Mountains and Carlingford, so, presumably, it brought together communities from different parts of Ireland.
“Burials all across Europe followed a very strict code of practice at the time, which indicates that communities in different parts of the continent were in contact with each other.
“This is graphically illustrated by one stone at the back of the monument, which has the typical Boyne valley concentric circles on one side and art from Brittany on the other. What is also fascinating is that the builders seem to have catered for visiting pilgrims; the site is unique in that this is the only place in Europe with elaborate art on the outside of the tomb which would have enhanced the experience for visitors.”
Although we will never know for certain, it is possible that this was the Mecca of its day, a site of huge symbolic meaning, where powerful figures were buried and which harvested the power of the sun to enhance and emphasise its cultural and spiritual significance. Situated on the periphery of Europe, a journey here must have been long and arduous and yet it is probable that the site had enough power to attract pilgrims from other parts of Europe.
Such theories — the ever-practical archaeologists remind us that theories are all we have — must remain within the realm of the imagination. And perhaps part of Newgrange’s powerful draw is that each of us can paint our own mental images of the people that lived there. It might be assumed, however, that the motives of modern visitors, who must enter a worldwide lottery for a chance to attend the solstice, are less opaque. Not so, says Claire Tuffy, the manager of the Brú na Bóinne visitor centre, who has been involved with Newgrange for 30 years.
“People come from all over the world and people’s experience of the event depends on what each individual brings with them,” she says. “For some, it is a novel experience to be ticked off a list and we have even had marriage proposals. For some, who have suffered a recent bereavement, it can be a time to contemplate the fragility of human existence and the nature of the afterlife. For those people, it can be a very moving experience.”
Waiting anywhere in Ireland for the sun to shine in December is risky and the Boyne valley is no exception. Yet people come from all over the world hoping the weather gods will be kind. “People don’t realise that it gets bright about 15 minutes before the sun clears the horizon and enters the chamber,” Tully says. “They worry that they will miss it, but when we enter the chamber it is completely dark. There is no way of telling if the sun will break through or not. This is a time for reflection, a time to quietly chat. If the sun is shining, the event begins as a small pencil of light, often unnoticed at the back of the chamber and gradually that light intensifies until the scene resembles a group of people around a bonfire.
“There can be a huge sense of joy and lightness and of shared experience and people are often surprised by the strength of their reaction. When it is over, the group files out usually giddy with excitement.”
For Tuffy, the event provides a visceral link with the past; these people were 200 generations back from our grandparents and almost certainly there are direct descendents of these ancient people still living in the Boyne valley.
“We can take great pride in their achievements; they had a vision and a dream; they set out to build a monument that would survive for ever and fair dues to them it is still here 5,000 years later,” she says. “Despite our technological expertise, it is very unlikely that any of our buildings will last as long.”
Stout feels a similar connection to the past, on the day. “Hundreds of us will stand outside and watch the chosen ones enter the chamber, rather as those ancient people might have watched their own leaders in the past,” she says. “It is a time for family and meeting old friends. We aren’t really that different from our ancestors; we still laugh and cry, we raise our children, we live and die. Perhaps we over-intellectualise the event; for them, as for us, it may well have been primarily a time to socialise and enjoy a remarkable event in a truly spectacular place.”
Newgrange was restored by MJ O’Kelly, professor of archaeology at University College Cork, who was also the first person in the modern era to identify and view the winter solstice. An engineer originally, O’Kelly was a dogged, methodical archaeologist whose interpretation of how Newgrange should look was not without its critics.
In particular, the reconstructed facade, which incorporates white-quartz stones and large cobbles and which gives it a distinctive look, raised some hackles at the time. One critic compared it to “a sort of cream cheese cake.” Rose Cleary is an archaeologist in UCC who recalls O’Kelly as determined, but also very innovative. “He used every source of information available to him from every department in the college to build a portrait of how the site was used,” she says. “He was at the forefront of a new wave in archaeology that picked up clues from sciences, such as ecology, anatomy and geology, to recreate the world these people lived in. He was very interested in the practicalities of how things worked and during his career he was also interested in early iron technology and fulachta fia cooking sites.” Stout is also a fan, although she says that she would not have recreated Newgrange in the same way that he did.
“I suppose everyone has their own interpretation of how it should look and his was very much based on the evidence available to him,” she says. “Without his practical engineering experience, we might never have reconstructed Newgrange.”
Whether his interpretation is correct in some of the minor details is a moot point, for he certainly created an iconic structure that is firmly established in the Irish psyche. It has become our Newgrange. O’Kelly worked at Newgrange from 1962 to 1975, ably assisted by his wife, Claire and wrote two books on the subject. His career at UCC lasted from 1946 until his death in 1982.
In 1962, O’Kelly uncovered a rectangular slit above the doorway, obscured by a block of crystallised quartz that could be moved back and forth like a shutter. This was the all-important roof box.
Aware of a tradition that sunlight shone into the tomb at certain times of year, he returned on his own on the winter solstice. Stunned, he watched as sunlight flooded into the chamber, until it was so bright he could clearly see the roof 20ft above him.
Further research would prove that this precise event was no accident and that the sun entered the chamber the same way 5,000 years ago.
In recent times, Dr Frank Prendergast, of the Dublin Institute of Technology, has demonstrated that the circle of stones in front of the Newgrange entrance was astronomical and calendrical in function. Less well-known is the Loughcrew passage tomb complex, also in Co Meath, where, at the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun lights up a limestone standing stone in Cairn T of the group.
Other important monuments with this characteristic include the stone circle at Drombeg, near Glandore in west Cork, whose alignment also captures the sun’s rays at the dawn of the winter equinox.
Although not universally accepted, many claim also that Stonehenge’s primary function was as a prehistoric astronomical calendar. Our ancestors, it appears, were considerably more sophisticated than we initially gave them credit for.
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