Today we visited two very cool (but very different) spots in Ireland! The first stop was a tomb called Newgrange, a really impressive sight. This monument is what they call a 'passage tomb' since you have to walk through a small passage that opens up to chamber in the center. This sight dates back to 3200 BC, which makes it older than pyramids or Stonehenge!
There are all these drawings on the rocks, both on the inside and the outside of the tomb. The stones are from different spots around Ireland, and some of them are huge, which means people must have brought them to the site using boats. Some are even from Dublin, which is an hour away by car.
The absolute coolest part is the roof box. On the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the sun shines perfectly through the opening. Apparently there are other tombs that also have roof boxes that produce this same effect on different solstice days!
The rest of the day was spent at Causey Farm, where we got to see baby sheep and other farm animals, learn some Irish dancing (not the really fast dancing, kinda more like line dancing), play a bodhrán (an Irish drum made of goatskin), and step in a peat bog! Peat bogs are made of decomposed plants and water. The soil barely has nutrients and is slightly acidic, so it preserves things really well.
There are 'bog bodies' in Dublin's natural history museum - people whose bodies were preserved in bogs (haven't visited yet, I probably should). Stepping in it felt kinda like quicksand! Another cool thing about the bogs is that people used to cut out blocks of it, dry it in the sun, then burn it as fuel. There aren't that many of these bogs though, and they are often protected now to preserve the landscape of Ireland.
No comments:
Post a Comment