Irish Prehistoric Sites.

There is hardly a town land in the island of Ireland that doesn't have an ancient monument of some kind, the total number catalogued must be colossal. And of course there must have been many thousands more that have been obliterated over the millennia, as man struggled to subdue the land for agricultural use

It isn't quite clear when the first settlers arrived here, after the last Ice age with the ice sheets receding, opportunities were being created for ever resourceful Homo erecteus

For academic purposes the archaeological worldhas divided our past into periods of time each of which posses a characteristic range of artefacts and monuments left behind by each successive community. These periods are:

• The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age 7,000 to 4,000 BC.
  
• The Neolithic or New Stone Age 4,000 to 2,400 BC.
  
• Copper Age 2,400 to 2,200 BC.
  
• Bronze Age 2,200 BC to 600 BC.
  
• Iron Age 600 BC to 400 AD.

During each period, humans have continuously evolved and as they progressed, new technologies and breakthroughs resulted in the creation of new artifacts and monuments which in their own way stand as a

The Early Stone Age.

The New Stone Age

Around 4,000 BC, society evolved from hunter gatherer activity to farming. Domesticated animals were introduced, and crops were grown, this period is known as the Neolithic, or the new stone age.
It was in this era a range of new monuments began to appear in the landscape, the best known of these are the megalithic tombs of Newgrange in Co. Meath. This structure consisting of about 200,000 tons of material, many of the stones weighing up to ten tons and brought to the site from some distance, clearly this was the product of a structured and well ordered society.