No Aliens Here

We made a stop on our drive from Belfast to Dublin at Bru Na Boinne burial sites. This was another UNESCO site. It is actually a collection of many burial mounds in eastern Ireland. Some if these mounds are structures 40 meters across and 8 meters high. They date from 5000 years ago which makes them about 1000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids and 500 years older than Stone Henge.

This was another very impressive site that archeologists are still learning a lot about (ie, the tour guides left a lot of stuff up to our own interpretation). Easily the most impressive feature was a light box in one of the big mounds that only let light in for about 14 minutes each year. Only at sun rise of the winter solstice would light ever get into the inside of the mound. The whole mound was built so precisely that after a few minutes in the morning on one day of the year no more sunlight would get in until a year later. And this was no accident. There is a sister site some miles away that only lets light in on the same day, but at dusk.

This precision has lead some...weirdos...to speculate that aliens were involved in the construction of the mounds. Why aliens would come here and build big mounds of dirt and rock is beyond my reckoning. Then again, humans spending upwards of 3 generations building big mounds of dirt and rock is also a bit perplexing. All I know is that I now have a plan for what I'm doing as next year's spring landscaping project.

Ryan