Newgrange is a beautiful building standing in Ireland (53o 42' latitude North and 6o 29' longitude West). It is more than 5000 years old (build around 3060 CalBCE or 2500 Uncal BP), and thus older than the pyramids in Egypt! This building, which is a big mound of some 80 meters in diameter, stands in the Boyne Valley, some 40 km north of Dublin. In this region two more big mounds are located: Dowth and Knowth.
The mound of Newgrange has been reconstructed by 'modern' people, with the materials that were present on site. Newgrange now looks very nice (if it really looks the same as 5000 years ago, remains a question):

Cross sections of Newgrange

The close environment around Newgrange is scattered with other megalithic constructs. Close to the mound the following items, approximately build around the same time, are important (© M.J. O'Kelly):

The environment around the entrance of the passage looks like this.

Winter solstice sunrise

On December 22, around winter solstice, in 1996 some pictures were taken from the outside. The sun was there at the right moment after four years of outage;-) I did not make photo's from the inside, because it is not allowed and because there is a (closed) waiting list until 2005.

The following photographs are taken:


There will be many questions around Newgrange, but I am interested in the following:

Age of Newgrange

The age of Newgrange is of course not easy and accurately known. But there is some information about a few parts of it (© M.J. O'Kelly): Remember: There is a difference of some 500 years around 4000 BCE between Uncal BP en (Cal)BCE: 3060 (Cal)BCE is almost the same as 4450 Uncal BP!

The turves from the north side were already present before the kerb stones were put down (see cut through at K53). The passage was made as the latest step, because of the turves which are positioned as a kind of basket around the passage and chamber.

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Major content related changes: January 17, 1997