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Paleolithic, or old
stone-age people
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Through the long development of the peoples of continental Europe, Ireland
was at the edge of things. However its fertile soil, copper and gold
deposits attracted some of Europe's most vigorous colonizing people.
Writing was not a part of Irish culture until the coming of Christianity,
therefore, for information on Ireland before people began to write, we
have to rely on the mute testimony of archaeology.
At the end of the last ice age, which set in over 100,000 years ago and
lasted until about 15,000 years ago, Europeans were cave dwellers and
lived by hunting the big game that abounded in the fertile grassy plains
of the southerly lowlands of the continent. We know a great deal about
these people and the animals they hunted, from their wonderful cave
paintings and the plentiful remains of their flint and bone implements. We
call them Paleolithic, or old stone-age people.
Ireland was much as Lapland is today, boggy grassland, with a little
vegetation on the hill slopes. By about 10,000 B.C., bushes began to grow
and giant red deer thrived, because there were, as yet, no men to hunt
them.
Mesolithic, or middle stone-age people
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As the ice receded, the warmer climate covered the continent in dense
woodland. Deer and other big game were crowded out. The hunters now had to
live on birds and fish. These we call Mesolithic, or middle stone-age
people. They no longer lived in caves, but built huts, with a central
hearth. They used microliths, tiny blades of flint, set as barbs, in
wooden shafts. They were entirely dependent on nature. They had to hunt
incessantly, in fierce competition with beasts and birds of prey.
These were the first people to come to Ireland, at about 6000 B.C. Britain
and Ireland were still joined to the continent, by land bridges. The sea
level was lower, because much of the earth's water was still frozen solid
on higher ground. We know them from the rubbish-dumps or kitchen middens
they left behind them, near swamps and rivers, where their food supplies
lived.
Neolithic, or new stone-age people
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While in Europe, only a tiny group of people could survive on a very large
area of forests and marsh, the first farmers were at work in the Middle
East. There, men were learning to control their environment. These
Neolithic, or new stone-age people, learned by closely observing wild
plants and grasses, that by scattering certain seeds, they could cultivate
grain. They tamed wild beasts into domestic herds, who not only provided
them with meat and hides, but also with milk and hair. They daubed wet
clay on baskets, which, when dry, made the basket waterproof. They later
discovered, that by force-drying certain clays, they could make them hard
and waterproof enough, without need of a basket frame. These pots, made
wholly of clay, were man's first manufactured products.
They learned to polish their rough stone tools, until they had felling
axes capable of cutting down trees. Now able to clear more land for
cultivation, they proceeded to break up the ground, with much improved
stone hoes. Egyptian paintings show us the whole process. These Neolithic
people expanded in the Middle East and we find them busy colonizing
Western Europe by about 3,000 B.C.
We find them in Ireland, tilling the choicest light limestone soil, about
this time. We know them from the remains of their houses, built of wood,
with stone foundations, thatched with rushes from the lakes. We have their
pots, their stone axes, their hoes, their antler picks used in
agriculture, their needles, their awls, their flint blades and scrapers,
their corn grinding stones. We know they kept cows, sheep and pigs. They
ate a lot of meat. They were vain and liked to look good, in their
beautifully crafted beads and bracelets.
We use the pollen in the mud in the bottom of lakes to read their record.
Samples from the lower levels of mud tells us, by its pollen count, of the
long period of virgin woodlands before the coming of these colonizing
farmers. As they cleared the forests, we find tree pollen replaced, with a
high count of pollen from cultivated grasses and cereals. Some clans
specialized in mass production of axes or pots for trade and export, when
they found a particularly suitable local stone or clay.
Megalithic, or large stone tombs
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We know some of their religious beliefs from the way they buried their
dead. Megalithic, or large stone tombs are common throughout Ireland, and
over large areas of Europe. Great social organization was required to
produce these dolmens, which are stone tripods with an enormous capstone.
These were often contained within a great cairn, with elaborate burial
chambers, approached by a passage. We call these, "Passage Graves". Great
quantities of burnt bone have been found in these excavated tombs. Vast
numbers of people, over a very long period of time, were first cremated,
then buried in these passage graves, with their pottery, beads and tools
for the next life.
Bronze Age People
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Meanwhile, again in the Middle East, technological advances were taking
place. Men had learnt to recognize ores. They were probably first
attracted by the bright color of gold. First they learned how to reduce
ore to molten metal. Soon they were casting it into molds of many shapes.
Then they progressed through other metals, such as copper and eventually,
to iron.
Prospectors for these metal ores reached Ireland about 2000 B.C. They
found what they were looking for. Pretty soon metalworkers were mass
producing great quantities of bronze objects and exporting the surplus, to
Britain and the Continent. Bronze drinking cups, food storage pots, for
the next life and fancy necklaces, start to appear in the burial chambers.
The burnt bones are now contained in bronze urns. These bronze-age people,
built temples for their religious feasts and ceremonies. Complicated
ceremonial circles of stone, begin to appear.
First
Iron Age People - The Celts
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Iron ore is more common and therefore cheaper than copper. However, it was
slow to replace copper and bronze, because it is technologically more
difficult to produce. It was not until about 600 B.C., that iron-using
tribes, wealthy because of their mastery of this metal, established
themselves, in central Europe. These powerful tribes, spread across
Europe, were closely linked, by a common language, similar religious
beliefs, by their appearance and by their way of life. The Greeks called
them Keltoi. We know them as Celts. They spread eastward into Asia Minor,
to become known, in biblical times, as the Galatians and westward into
France, Spain, Britain and finally to Ireland.
We know the Celts were firmly established in Ireland by about 150 B.C.
With their superior weapons, they completely dominated the aboriginal
stone age hunters, early farmers, bronze age metalworkers and the
herdsmen, who had lived in Ireland for thousands of years. Pockets of
these ancient people survived for centuries as distinctive groups, under
Celtic overlordship. But generally the rich culture of the strong iron-age
Celtic immigrants blended with the ancient Irish, to produce a way of life
described in the "Tain", which reminds us of the Homeric warriors in the
"Iliad" and of the chariot-driving warriors of the "Mahabharata" of
Northern India. Great Kings, Judges and Poets abound. Life settled down
mainly as an agricultural country with a population of perhaps, a half
million people. The island was divided into at least 150 small kingdoms,
called "Tuatha". Battles were rare, often just single combat affairs,
between heroes, but they were sung about for centuries.
By the fifth century A.D. the country could be said to have become
completely Celticized, sharing a common culture and a common language.
This Celtic language, whose last remnants and culture still survive, in
the Irish-speaking households of the west of Ireland today, like Greek,
Sanskrit, Germanic, Latin, Slavonic or Persian, is an old branch of the
Indo-European family of languages.
Celtic Society
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With the coming of Christianity, the learned class of Druids and Poets,
collaborated with the monks and adapted the Latin alphabet. The result was
a native Irish literature, recording for us, the long remembered and oft
repeated spoken verses and stories. We now call these stories the
"Mythological Cycles". They tell of the Celtic Gods and the successive
invasions of stone age, bronze age and iron age peoples into Ireland, like
the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha De Danann. They are the epic stories of our
prehistory. Historians argue over what is genuine history and what is
purely mythological.
There were no towns or villages in Celtic Ireland. People lived in
individual farms. The "fairy forts" that dot the countryside today, are
the outlines of the earthen ramparts and stockades, within which each
family lived and inside of which, they took their livestock at night, to
protect them from wild beasts.
Irish society was rigidly stratified, although it was possible to rise or
fall in status. Poets and musicians were highly honored. Irish law has
close parallels in Hindu law. The Brehons, or judges, asserted the
individual rights of the people and interpreted, what they called, natural
law. The basic unit of value was a young heifer, indicating a simple
agrarian economy, which was common all over Europe at the time. The Latin
name for money is pecunia, based on the word pecus, meaning cattle.
There was no High King or any central government, of any kind. There was
no need for one, as the people were peaceful and the whole country enjoyed
a remarkable degree of cultural unity. The descendants of the ancient
Celtic Druids, were now "men of art". These included the poets, who were
really historians and genealogists. They memorized immense quantities of
material. They traveled freely from tuath to tuath and were fed by their
hosts. They survived, as the repository of Irish Celtic culture, to be
such a thorn in the side of Queen Elizabeth I, as she tried to extinguish
Celtic society, in the sixteenth century, that she was provoked to call
them, those "lewd rhymers".
© Pat Flannery 1994
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