Solstice! Anyone else?

Meathgirl

Hey guys

I'm going over to NEwgrange for the solstice! A dream come through! I cant wait! Anyone else going!

UCD graduate of Archaeology 08.

Riamfada

I was thinking about popping up if im off work

InTheTrees

I havent been there in years. We went a few times when I was a kid and there's a story that my mum got stuck when she was pregnant with me.

I havent seen it since they put up the recreated facade.

Azelfafage

The best tour is universally regarded as this one:

http://www.newgrangetours.com/newgrange-tara.html

Mary has only one bus so I am not doing an ad stunt for a multinational.

If you need details about the maths of Newgrange.......brush up on your maths of Dublin.
Especially about the Quaternions invented by the Dubliner Rowan Hamilton at Broom Bridge.

Tell her Peter sent you.
.
.

Wibbs

I was in there as a kid in the 70's for the solstice. Very cool stuff. I've been back since and if you want to get a bit of the light show a lesser version occurs either side of the solstice itself.

I agree the facade is a bit of a joke with precious little evidence for a sheer wall like that. They had to put a reinforced concrete wall up to support it. :rolleyes:. OK they did find a large amount of white rounded river stones around the front of the site so they were involved in some way. The knowth mound, which for my mind is by far the better site(something like 70% of all neolithic art in europe is found on the thing), they've gone for the idea that these stones were a kind of pavement at the entrance. Which does look better.

I dunno. Personally I would be of the opinion that the stones were a covering for the entire mound. Kinda like a fancier version of Queen Meabhs mound. They would look bloody impressive from afar being all white on top. Yes they found most of the stones at the front of the site and then wildly IMHO extrapolated the current theories. I would have siad given these mounds had been used as bases for forts and had stone removed for quarrying over the years the front was where most people walked up and down them, so it stands to reason the top layers would end up in front. Look at old pre tourist newgrange and you'll notice a clear path up to the top beside the entrance.

The alignments are fascinating and they're not the only ones to have amazing celestial alignments either. Knowth as mentioned has some amazing decorated kerbstones, including one that looks like a sundial. Hell it is one, with a gnomon hole included. Which predates what the babylonians were up to by 1000s of years. The loughcrew site is another much less well known one to visitors and it has art and alignments a plenty. The symbols which seem to be regarded by many as purely religious doodlings with little beyond that also IMHO have a helluva lot more going on. I would see these monuments as more than tombs and more like giant astronomical clocks as well. Very handy for the early farmers. They say stonehenge has many alignments, well many passage tombs here knock it into the twopenny place by comparison.

There are a group of scientists and thinkers building a clock that'll last for 10,000 years, well I'd be saying here's a few we made earlier

Azelfafage

Everybody knows that they "sexed up" Newgrange in the 1960s.

Mind you.

Newgrange probably looked something like that several thousand years ago!

.