E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

5,000 years ago, an extraordinary people lived in Ireland. They were farmers, hunters and builders. Without the benefit of the wheel, and with tools made only of flint, they carved their culture into history. Along the banks of the River Boyne, they built houses to their dead, repositories to their spirit – monuments to immortality.

Brú na Boinne: Monument to Immortality

I don’t spend all my time involved in learning and development.

No, no, no.

Among my more arcane, but nevertheless very satisfying interests is in the culture of the Neolithic (New Stone Age), and particularly the culture of the Beaker People of Western Europe. An event central to the lives of the people of this culture in Ireland (which resonates with us today) occurs this Sunday, 21st December on the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere.

At ten minutes to nine on the morning of the shortest day of the year, a pale and weak sun slowly rises above a ridge in the Boyne River valley. As its rays penetrate the dawn mist, a solitary building sits atop it hill… waiting. Waiting as it has every year for over fifty centuries to shine once again as a beacon to the Spirit Of Man – a place where people forever bound to the earth can, however briefly, capture the Fire of the Sun and touch the sky.

Newgrange is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the winter solstice sun. Above the entrance to the passage at Newgrange there is a opening called a roof-box. Its purpose is to allow sunlight to penetrate the chamber on the shortest days of the year, around December 21, the Winter Solstice.

At dawn, from December 19th to 23rd, a narrow beam of light penetrates the roof-box and reaches the floor of the chamber, gradually extending to the rear of the passage. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9am.

Newgrange’s accuracy as a time-telling device is all the more remarkable when you think that it was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids in Giza, and more than 1,000 years before Stonehenge.

Thanks to the Irish Office of Public Works (OPW) and facilitated by the good people at Servecast (yo! Julian, Declan, & Sinead!) you will have the opportunity to view this event live online on the morning of 21st December.