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Unlike Stonehenge in England, Newgrange is little known of outside Ireland although it
is a monument of great historical significance: the latest radio-carbon datings take us
back to 3,250 B.C. Older than the Pyramids of Egypt by centuries, older than
Stonehenge by a thousand years, Newgrange has been correctly described as the oldest
existing building in the world. However Newgrange is more than a testament to the
great architectural skills of the mound builders in the Boyne Valley; its greater
significance lies in its entire cosmology which as yet remains largely undeciphered.
For Newgrange is more than just a long-lost wonder of the world, it is the key to an
understanding of the oldest culture known to us.
Newgrange still promises the most exciting archeological discoveries of our time: the
decipherment of its vast repetoire of symbols, sundials, calendars and measurements of
length. After five thousand years the science of Newgrange still functions perfectly.
By constructing a long and narrow passage the mound builders created an instrument which
narrows and elongates a beam of sunlight in such a way that they were able to measure the
length of the year with perfect accuracy. We can assume from this that the architect or
architects of Newgrange were not mere star-gazers but serious, scientific astronomers and
mathematicians concerned with the nature of time and the universe.
"Geometry did not begin on the banks of the Nile" says Martin Brennan in his book 'The
Boyne Valley Vision,' "it began on the banks of the Boyne…and the famous theorem of
Pythagoras was thousands of years old before Pythagoras was born."
Today Newgrange stands unique, a cathedral of the megalithic age, a monument to a long
dead race known now only through myth and legend as the Tuatha De Danann, the semi-divine
ancestors of the Gael.
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