Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Brú na Bóinne Visitors Center and Museum
Buy your ticket (to one or both tombs), find out when the next shuttle bus leaves, then
spend your waiting time in the excellent museum, grabbing lunch in the cheery cafeteria,
and using the WCs (they're scarce at the tomb sites).
The museum introduces you to the Boyne River Valley and its tombs. No one knows
who built the 40 burial mounds found in the surrounding hills. Exhibits re-create what
these pre-Celtic people might have been like—simple farmers and hunters living in huts,
fishing in the Boyne, equipped with crude tools of stone, bone, or wood.
Then around 3200
B.C.
, someone had a bold idea. They constructed a chamber of large
stones,withalongstone-lined passageleadinguptoit.Theycovereditwithahugemound
of dirt and rocks in successive layers. Sailing down the Boyne to the sea, they beached
at Clogherhead (12.5 miles from here), where they found hundreds of five-ton stones,
weathered smooth by the tides. Somehow they transported them back up the Boyne, pos-
sibly by tying a raft to the top of the stone so it was lifted free by a high tide. They then
hauled these stones up the hill by rolling them over logs and up dirt ramps, and laid them
around the perimeter of the burial mound to hold everything in place. It would have taken
anywhere from five years to a generation to construct a single large tomb.
Why build these vast structures? Presumably, it was to bury VIPs. A dead king might
be carried up the hill to be cremated on a pyre. Then they'd bring his ashes into the tomb,
parading by torchlight down the passage to the central chamber. The remains were placed
in a ceremonial basin, mingled with those of his illustrious ancestors.
To help bring the history to life, the museum displays replicas of tools and objects
found at the sites, including the ceremonial basin stone and a head made out of flint, which
may have been carried atop a pole during the funeral procession. Marvel at the craftsman-
ship of the perfectly spherical stones (and the phallic one), and wonder at their purpose.
The tombs may also have served an astronomical purpose; they're precisely aligned to
the movements of the sun, as displays and a video illustrate. You can request a short tour
and winter solstice light-show demo at a full-size replica of the Newgrange passage and
interior chamber.
Since the tombs are aligned with the heavens, it begs the question: Were these struc-
tures sacred places where primal Homo sapiens gathered to ponder the deepest mysteries
of existence?
