The Ring of Kerry has a large amount of megalithic sites. This video looks at five of these. Feel free to comment and add your favourites below, whether in Kerry, Ireland, or anywhere else
#ancienthistory #ancientstones #megalithic #ireland_travel #discoverireland #Kerry #irishhistory #wildatlanticway #irisharchaeology
2 Comments
Did Christians ever try to destroy them?
Tis looking beautiful over there. I shall watch the rest later… my belly begs fodder.
The traces found of that cairn are interesting… that's a matter I find particularly puzzling… since mounds in other circumstances tend to remain once covered in turf e.g. burial mounds. Of course looters would clear away part of a mound to reach the interior were it there but not the whole thing. Those dolmens/portal tombs I've visited show no signs of removed earth around them and I find the seeming presumption that many dolmens were originally buried in mounds jars with the sculptural attention to detail seen in the structures… which shouts "stand and look at the grandeur of my mighty stones!" …It seems bizarre to bury them. Also those existing cairns with chambers inside them I've looked at appear quite different, with interior chambers walled in quite different way to dolmen construction.
I tend to think mounds of smaller stone/rubble were possibly used in their construction, rather than earth mounds which would turn to mud and require heavy tamping to take the strain of having large boulders dragged across them. A quick filling of rubble stone picked off the surrounding land could then make an easy way to sure up the walls whilst the capstones were placed on… then that rubble pulled out once the capstones were balanced well and that stone then used to construct the courts around them, the remains of which appear a common feature… if there was a hundred or so folk there to pull the larger stones, they could very quickly form a chain to fling small stones into the interior of the structure in preparation for setting the capstones. Those smaller, surrounding stones subsequently set to create the "staging" or court would then be the first thing to lose form and wander off to be placed in nearby drystone walls etc. So, I wonder if this mound phase used to aid construction, if indeed they were used, is what is being confused with traces of a mound covering them for perpetuity.
Anyhow, questions, questions, questions! Thank you… a wee piece of the puzzle.