Between 13,000 and
9,000 years ago in Ireland the Mesolithic Period was in full swing and
ushered in vast natural changes in Ireland; Glaciers melted and the
ocean rose from -426 feet below sea level to sea level as we know it
today; Coastal areas were flooded and the Irish Sea and Galway Bay
evolved from being fresh water lakes to part of the
ocean.
During that time it was possible to cross from
Europe to Scotland and from Scotland to Ireland over land bridges until
those bridges themselves were buried under the sea. From time to time
there were brief mini ice ages and for short periods of time land
bridges re-appeared above sea level.
Ireland was substantially composed of badly
drained areas with thousands of lakes fed by retreating glaciers. Those
lakes were shallow, from three up to twenty feet deep. As the
temperatures warmed, water reeds grew up around the lakes, and other
water plants thrived. As the plants died and sank to the bottom in
sedimentary layers until the lakes were filled with decaying vegetation.
Those became bogs which fueled Irish hearths for thousands of
years.
Read more
details about the eskers and bogs here.
Although the land bridge between Ireland and
England sunk below the sea, the bridges subsequently reappeared from
time to time during mini ice ages. While trees and vegetation filed in a
landscape formerly scrubbed clean by glaciers, and animals like giant
deer continued to migrate to Ireland.
As the Mesolithic Period died with the end of
the Ice Age, European cave dwellers tended to follow the glaciers
north. After 9,000B.C. humans could have walked from Europe to England
and Scotland and from there to Ireland, but they evidently did not do so
that early.
After 8,000BC the first stirrings of human
entry into Ireland began to occur. Irish legend holds that the first
people to come to Ireland were ugly sea-going monsters dubbed
Famorians, who purportedly settled the
seashore and rivers of Ireland and eventually died from a plague brought
by new people.
Of course no writings exist extant to
9,000B.C. Ireland, so folk lore exist only in the imaginations of the
peoples who followed around 6,000B.C.
Read more about
Mythology in Ireland
Paleontologists and Archeologists believe that
the first humans came across a land bridge created by a mini ice age to
the area of Antrim Ireland around 8,000B.C. Some think they may have
come by wooden boat or raft. By radio-carbon tests they theorize a
racial continuity between the Mesolithic communities found in North
Ireland, Wales and Scotland. If accurate, the timeframe of habitation in
Ireland is pushed back to 10,000 years, in substantial agreement with
findings of some Archeologists.
Thirty years ago archaeologists excavating in
County Derry found fragments of Mesolithic era huts and charcoal
evidently from cooking fires that were later carbon dated to between
6,500 to 7,000B.C. A beach in County Antrim yielded thousands of flint
tools including knives and arrowheads. Over in County Offaly
archaeologists found a Mesolithic settlement at Lough ( Lake )
Boora.
Evidence suggests that humans from Antrim
spread south down the coast of Ireland to County Cork and up inland
rivers to Connaught. At the mouth of Galway Bay on the west coast of
Ireland lies the Aran Islands, where evidence suggests habitation in
6,000B.C. Co-incidentally, 6,000B.C. is about the earliest estimate of
the arrival in Ireland of the first tribe of so called
Celts.
To summarize the Mesolithic period, the people
of that era were hunters and gatherers. Some of the earliest symbols
found on rocks suggest that the men hunted wild boar in the winter;
Their hunting weapons were tipped with flint; Their diet was rich in
meat, supplanted by nuts and berries gathered by the women of the tribe;
They cooked outside and lived in small huts covered with animal
skins.
Credit
for use of some maps
For evidence of early habitation
in County Mayo, see Ceide
Fields of County Mayo.
Neolithic Age:
3,000 B.C. new people came to Ireland. Unlike
the peoples of the Mesolithic Period, these new people were farmers.
Facts about their civilization is found at Lough ( lake ) Gur in Co.
Limerick. They left behind tools like knives, axe-heads and spears, and
megalithic monuments and tombs at Newgrange in County
Meath.
2,000B.C. marked the entry to Ireland of
people skilled in mining and metalworking, developed skills in jewelry
and pottery making and forging metal tools and weapons. This became
known later as the Bronze Age.
Read about
the Bronze Age on the Fianna website.
1,700B.C. enter the earliest recorded Kings of
Ulster and Ireland, the Milesians who probably came from Spain.
Read about the Milesian
Genealogies and legends of the Fianna
Warriors on the Fianna Website.
1,200B.C. the first *Crannog* was built for
defenses. That feature was an artificial island built usually in a lake,
and with only horses and wagons, must have been human labor intensive.
Suggestions are that most labor in those times was provided by slaves
guarded by private armies.
Between 1,200 and 100B.C. several waves of
Celts came to Ireland, the last group known as Gaels.
Ireland was divided into 150 small
kingdoms called *tuaths*. Chiefs of tuaths in turn were aligned with one
of five Provincial Kings, Connaught, Ulster, Leinster, Munster and
Meath. The laws under which the Kingdoms were governed were known as
Brehon Laws.
According to Fianna, "Celtic Ireland had a simple agrarian economy. No coins
were used, and the cow was the unit of exchange. There were no towns.
Society was stratified into classes, and was regulated by the Brehon
Laws, based largely on the concepts of the 'tuath' as the political
body, and the 'fine' or extended family as the social unit."
Additional
information can be found at the following interesting
links:
Ancient and
Medieval Links
History Links
from the Wild Irish Roves
Hyper
History Online
Ulster
History Timeline
Irish
History
Old
Ireland - History: THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE
List of Soldiers
with Cromwell
Ireland -
History in Maps
Chronology of
Ireland
Has more
Neolithic site material
Copyright
Potted Histories 1998
Copyright Fun Histories
1996
