h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk.h2g2/guide/A640838

Here is an entry about the Passage Tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in Ireland. These New Stone Age monuments were built in 3200 BC and show that pre-historic people were just as capable of good design as modern humankind.

Tut Tut....

Gnomon, you should know better

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A640838

PS. I'm sadistic, I just love picking on people who've been here far longer than me

Off to read it now... But I imagine it'll be up to your usual high standards.

I was right, excellent as usual

I've only one question, in the History and archeology paragraph you talk about radiocarbon dating of Turves - What's a turve? (Unless I missed a reference to it earlier in the entry, in which case, please ignore me for babbling incoherently

congratulations

Whisky

PS, the links to the photo's are excellent

According to my dictionary, a turf, plural turves, means "a piece of the upper stratum of soil bound by grass and plant roots into a thick mat". But if the word is not generally known, I'll think of some other way of saying it.

Oops, you're right of course, it's just that I've only ever seen the word used in the singular "some turf" etc.: We'll now wait and see if everyone else is as dumb as me

I really like this entry - I think you have covered the topic well, in a very readable way. I have also heard people boasting that, as well as being marginally older than the Pyramids, the tombs are more than 1,000 years older than the first stone circle at Stonehenge (haven't time to check that at the moment, though).

Good work!
Azara

P.S. 'sods' might be more recognisable than 'turves', except that people might assume that a Neolithic sod was a particularly oldfashioned kind of chauvinist!

Azara

Nice one Gnomon,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. You're linking to an excellent site as well - great pictures, more information and all the visitor details. The Visitor Centre is new since I was last there and sounds like a good way of making the most of the experience. I seem to remember getting lost in a maze of little rural roads trying to find all the sites for myself last time.
Your article looks complete to me
Best of luck
MC

Oh and I didn't have a problem with turves in your opening paragraph when it was obvious but thought it did feel a bit strange in your carbon dating sentence. Maybe a British/Irish English thing?

Whisky, Metal Chicken, I've changed the radiocarbon dating reference from "turves" to "soil layers". Thanks.

Azara, you're right about Newgrange being much older than Stonehenge, but I'm not going to mention that in the Entry, because many of the scouts are English, and I don't want to put anyone's nose out of joint.

I've made two minor changes to this entry:

1. I've replaced the word hill with mound or cairn in some places, as it was used too often.

2. I've changed the link to the pictures: there is now one link which brings you to a general page of pictures of Newgrange.

Both of these were on the advice of the owner of the site referenced in the link.

And I'd say tweek the nose of the UK Scouts.

Nice one!

definitely ! great entry, lots of really interesting info!


ps- in the first para you might add a footnote to turves, such as, "plural of turf" to make it clearer what it means.

I've removed the word turves, since it is obviously causing confusion.

A wise decision, and an excellent entry.
Good show, yet again


Recommended.

I've just tried to have a look at this and got a bad gateway .

Is there a problem?

did you try the first link, or the second? the second worked for me.

Oh, yes!

Two comments. Aonghus the Magician? Who he> If you know any more about him, it may be worth putting it in as a footnote.

Secondaly, there is an excellent book, 'The Mystic Spiral' by Jill Purce ISBN0-500-81005-2, which features the Threshold stone at the entrance to the tumulus at New Grange.

It says 'Entrance to the "Holy of Holies". Passing a spiral barrier into an inner sanctuary seems, like the passage through the labyrinth, to have been a necessary passport into the sacred realm. The realm of immortality is reached by a real or symbolic death from the relative and transient natural world, and rebirth into the land of the dead - or the next world. This theme is found throughout the Megalithic and neolithic worlds: in much of Eruope, in Mexice, in China and in Egypt. Such spirals demonstrate the evolutionary nature of the journey being made. Since there are oftentwo dominant spirals ... they suggest the balancing of opposing vortical energies, by which the state of wholeness or enlightenment is reached. as in passing between the two opposing columns of the Tree of Life, the initiate or sould is put into contact with the vertical still axis, the unmoved mover around which the natural world revolves.'

There's a whole lot of other stuff at different places about the double spiral being the representation of the split in the world egg, two halves of the spherical vortex, continuity between polarities, alternate involution and evolution, yin/yang, etc.

You may or may not want to use any of this. Even if you don't, it's more information for you!

I like the article a lot, by the way.

Thanks Singing Fish, for that quotation, but I definitely am not going to use it. Absolutely nothing is known about why the Neolithic People used spirals, and I have said this in the article. You can speculate all you like, but it won't get you any nearer the truth. What you quoted may apply to the Celtic people who came to Ireland later, but there is no evidence that this is what the Neolithic people believed.

Aonghus the Magician was just a character in some of the old Celtic tales. I don't think he ever did very much, but he was wise, old and could do magic. A sort of Gandalf figure, I suppose, but he tended to stay put in Bru na Boinne and as a result was not involved in many tales.