Susan Jacobson

I visited Newgrange this weekend, aka "The Irish Stonehenge." It was amazing. Basically, there are three burial mounds near each other in County Meath, sort of like Navan Fort, only much larger, and where you may actually enter the structure. Newgrange is the oldest, and has been named the oldest building in the world by the UN. It was built 5,000 years ago, although humans had been living there as long as 7,000 years ago. It has a multi-layered stone roof that has remained waterproof for more than 5,000 years. I saw it myself, and it is amazing.



The entranceway to Newgrange is marked by a oblong stone blocking the front of the door. It is covered with a circular engraving that is repeated throughout the site, and in its neighbor, Knowth. Many of the small building stones that were used to make Newgrange and Knowth were carved with the same design. Megalithic: or Stone Age stone carvings. No one knows what the symbols mean - they could represent water, life... there are often three of them together. Some scholars have speculated that they are kind of a map - representing the sites of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. (Dowth was "not excavated using modern techniques," the guides say, almost sadly.)



Around the mound of Knowth there are flat rocks known as kerbstones, on which the circular designs and other designs are carved. The designs are pre-Celtic. The Celts came after, around 500 BC, although Celts were influenced by the pre-Celtic cultures that existed at Newgrange, Knowth and Navan Fort. Newgrange and Knowth were abandoned around 1200 AD. They were not rediscovered until about 1700, and were not excavated until the 1960s. No legends are associated with Newgrange and Knowth. Navan Fort, on the other hand, kept on and is the center of Irish Celtic legends. ( See more images from Newgrange. )