Nice Mounds!

 

 Today I visited two Neolithic mounds North of Dublin that were constructed sometime around 3200 BCE. The older one, Newgrange has been almost completely restored to it's original condition. It was excavated in the 1960's and of course had fallen into disrepair and built on top of in the middle ages for forts and lookout towers. Even a middle age farmhouse used some of the stones.

    Both large mounds have stone lined tunnels that are aligned with winter solstice and predate Stone Henge by a fair amount. There is even middle age graffiti inside Newgrange etched into the walls of the inner sanctum. 

Sun would create a line on the background rock

    The outer circumference is lined with large boulders, many of which have patterns etched into them with spirals and shapes. Since this predates metal tools, they were etched by using hard stones such as quartz.

Notice the etchings at the top and center

Spirals everywhere

    When we went into the museum, they compared the spirals of Newgrange to those of the Anasazi Indians in America.

NewGrange ~3200 BCE

Anasazi ~200-1300 AD

    What's also interesting is that the tunnels in one mound are in the shape of a cross which would put it 3200 years before Christ.

    MaldaHide Castle Tour:

    Late this afternoon, I dropped into Maldahide castle which was built by an English nobleman by the name of Talbot in the 1600's. Much like Hearst Castle in California, it started with modest beginnings and was added on to and added onto. It stayed in the family until 1972 when the family member woman who inherited it could'nt afford the 50% of the value tax, so she sold it to the local county and moved to Maldahide Australia.  

    

    The tour guide gave us several interesting ideas about where modern colloquialisms came from. Apparently plasterers drank heavily while doing their job, so the term "getting plastered" came from this. 

    Women would gather after dinner in a room with the fireplace, but apparently cosmetics at the time contained wax, so if they went to the fireplace to warm themselves, they would take and hold a face shield so their face would'nt run and so this gave us "saving face". 

    Finally, there was only a single bathtub in the house, so the Lord would take the bath and the Lady the second using the same bathwater and so on down the line. Babies were the last to get bathed, so the term "Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater" came into being.

    With all going well, I'll be back Friday evening, so hope to see you all in the hood...

Dave