Ireland - Ireland 2014 - page 2

The Irish love their proverbs and revere their past. According to an old Irish adage,
“WhenGodmadetime,hemadealotofit.”Irishhistorystretchesbackthousandsofyears,
yet is as close as the mist-shrouded ruins around the next bend of a country road. Ire-
land is dusted with undisturbed prehistoric stone circles, burial mounds, standing stones,
and table-like dolmens...some older than the pyramids, and all speckled with moss. While
much of Europe has buried older cultures under new, Ireland still reveals its cultural bed-
rock, dating back to the time when our ancestors finally stopped hunting and gathering and
began to build to last. It's a place to connect with your roots, even if you're not Irish.
Though a relatively small island (about the size of the state of Maine), Ireland has had
a disproportionately large impact on the rest of the world. Geographically isolated in the
damp attic of Dark Age Europe, Christian Irish monks tended the flickering flame of liter-
acy, then bravely reintroduced it to the barbaric Continent. Ireland later turned out some of
modern literature's greatest authors. In the 1800s, great waves of Irish emigrants fled fam-
ine and colonial oppression, seeking new opportunities abroad and making their mark in
the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. And although peace now prevails in North-
ern Ireland, the religious and political conflict there long held the world's attention.