Yesterday we visited the Brú na Bóinne complex  in county Meath, an excellent and highly recommended experience.

The Brú na Bóinne complex consists of three main structures, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth together with a plethora of satellite tombs.  It is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.  How was it built?  This is a magnificent feat of construction and engineering, built before the invention of the wheel and metal tools. Why was it built?  Speculation abounds ( aliens not excluded).

The three main structures have been accurately dated to between c. 3200 and 3100 BC. This makes them five hundred years older than the current form of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt , as well as predating the Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece. They have each been, very accurately, aligned with the rising or setting sun at different solstices.

We started at Knowth and admired the many examples of, what is said to be abstract Neolithic rock art.  However, whether or not there is meaning in these swirls, chevrons and lozenges, has been lost in the mists of time and, I think, is even beyond speculation.

I found Newgrange more accessible. You enter through a narrow nineteen metres long passageway which ascends about a metre to reach the central chamber. However, once you reach that small corbelled space, you realise that you have not only walked nineteen metres but also travelled back in time, five thousand years.  What you are seeing and feeling is exactly what our Neolithic ancestors experienced.

Most monuments record past glories, but the people who built Newgrange were not only sun worshipers they also wanted to communicate with future generations, they were time surfers. The structure is aligned with the rising sun at the solstice, at midwinter, at the time of the shortest day, around the 22nd December .  At this date and for a few days on either side the rising sun floods along the passageway and lights up the central chamber for a brief seventeen minutes.

For those not lucky enough to be there, the effect can now be created artificially. The chamber is plunged into darkness and the artificial sun god starts his journey along the passageway.  It has a gentle hypnotic effect and you become very much aware that you are not only standing in the place of those Neolithic people on that very first midwinter morning  five thousand years ago but also in that of future generations, five thousand years and millennia to come.

The concept of long periods of time is a difficult one for our human brain to conceive, we tend to think in terms of our own life span.  However, the light will continue to flood in every midwinter morning as long as there is a sun to shine and, maybe, long after there is anyone left to enjoy it.