Chapter


20 The Stone Age (4000–2000 BC)


the first farmers who arrived in Ireland around 4000 BC in what is called the Neolithic period.


By  e end of  is chapter I wi …


* be able to draw and describe a dolmen, a * understand the elements of Stone Age * be able to draw and describe the entrance


court cairn and a passage grave designs and the techniques they used


stone at Newgrange and a few other objects * have opinions that I can back up on the


meaning of Stone Age structures and designs. Before Pre-Christian


Ireland Settled communities were late to develop in Ireland. The first Palaeolithic people who lived here, c. 10500 BC, lived by hunting and by gathering wild fruits and vegetables. Farming had developed in the Middle East from c. 9000 BC, but did not reach Ireland and the far West and North of Europe until c. 4000 BC. The world population was relatively small at the time, so there was no great pressure on people to find new land. Trade and communications were just beginning to develop.


Context The first permanent dwelling places were made by


CHAPTER 20 THE STONE AGE (c. 4000–2000 BC)


These farmers seemed to have arrived in the north- east of the country first, where a crossing from Scotland would have been the shortest sea journey from Britain. They probably brought their seeds and animals with them on the crossing, which means they must have had substantial boats or rafts even at this early time. Neolithic people spread out across the country over the course of a few hundred years, because their dwelling and burial sites are found countrywide.


Innovation and


Invention Everything that the Stone Age people built and designed was new in this country. There were no examples for them to work from, so they were a creative and inventive people solving design and construction problems as they encountered them.


Passage mounds, a type of Neolithic burial structure, can be found in countries along the Atlantic coast from Africa to Scandinavia, but the largest and most elaborately decorated examples are in Ireland.


287


Neolithic: The New Stone Age (Neolithic) was from 3700 to 2000 BC in Ireland. The word comes from the Greek words neo, meaning ‘new’ and lithos meaning ‘stone’. It refers to the time when farming and tool-making evolved and people began to settle in permanent communities.


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