98. Back to 3200 B.C.

This week I rendezvoused at the Molly Malone statue with a small group of people to be transported back in time to over 5000 years ago. Our time travel started in a van driving to the Boyne Valley, an hour north of Dublin. Our destination were ancient burial mounds, 37 of them, with smaller ones like satellites circling the three largest ones. They were built by a Stone Age farming community in this fertile valley. Stone and bone were their only tools. Metals had not yet been developed. Who were these people? And what are these structures? Are they just burial sites? Ceremonial or ritual? Ancient temples?

To start with, this demonstrates the social evolution of man. When you settle down to create a stable food supply, instead of hunting and gathering, you free up capacity for other tasks. You begin to not only create, but to invest in long term engineering efforts that call for the specialization of different skill sets within the society. It unleashes a tsunami of possibilities. Yet these sites are . . . well, impossible to fathom.

These are Europe’s largest passage tombs, meaning inside the bigger ones you may have a long stone tunnel passage to an inner chamber, often a cruciform with three recessed alcoves. Remnants of bone and cremated ash can be found. One had the remains of three dogs or wolves buried as well, each one placed in front of an inner chamber alcove, as if they were guarding the threshold to something greater. The meaning of “Why” gives rise to mystery! But even more mysterious is the question of “How.” How did these stone age innovators move tons of stone from miles away. With log rollers? Floating down river? I don’t think so. The engineering feat itself is as mysterious as is their purpose. As a reminder, this achievement predates the Egyptian pyramids and England’s Stonehenge by hundreds of years.

But it gets even more unbelievable. The Newgrange burial mound has a 62 foot long passage with its entrance on the south east side. Above it is another “roof box” entrance, not for human access but for light. Our small group was allowed to enter the passage below and walk slowly, hunched over through its tight quarters, through the 20 yards of irregular stone, sometimes turning sideways in the narrows. But as we walked our path also rose in elevation six feet. It’s so subtle you don’t notice. Then when we reached the inner chamber, the passage route and the roof box shaft for light converged. These Stone Age engineers built it so accurately that the winter solstice sunrise shines directly through the roof box towards the center, illuminating the inner chamber with a spear of light. Inside, the midnight blackness of sensory deprivation would be pierced through with a ray of light. So we have not only a physical engineering challenge but we have a mathematical/solar calendar calculation for this light to enter exactly at this time of year for about 17 minutes. Over the years with the anomaly of inexact leap year measurements and even tilting of the earth’s axis, the solstice phenomenon at Newgrange is still surprisingly accurate.

Some may say this was only meant as a phenomenon for the dead remains inside, to bridge the two worlds. But could it have been used as a ritual site for the living as well, to “initiate” them from the dark shroud of the sense world into the light of a cosmic spirit. A reminder of their origin? Could what they experienced physically here trigger in them an internal awareness of who they really are? Even today we may think of consciousness as a spark of light, an awareness of ourselves within a larger picture.

When our small group was in the interior chamber there was still some ambient light because the walk-in entrance was not blocked by a larger stone. It was dark, but not sensory deprivation. For us this was still August and not the dead of winter. But to simulate what it may have felt like, a light source was activated in the shaft above which cast a spear of light that cut through the darkness. It culminated in the far middle alcove near a triple spiral etched into the stone. This symbol has been there for 5200 years, and still can be illuminated for our imagination today.

We were not allowed to photograph inside, as was fitting. Anything we saw was to be internalized as an experience instead of captured on a lifeless screen. To this day, the Newgrange complex in Ireland holds a worldwide lottery where up to 30,000 have applied, but only a handful chosen each year to arrive at Christmastide, in the predawn early morning of the winter solstice, and wait in total darkness to experience this phenomenon of light and stone for themselves. This could be you.

Or, you could close your eyes today, anytime, anywhere and quiet the senses and see what quickens in your own imagination. Ultimately, whatever happened at Newgrange as ancient ritual, we must learn today to initiate for ourselves. As our consciousness changes, so too does our capacity to evolve.