Many people who visit the ancient and magnificent Newgrange monument in
the Boyne Valley are driven by some deep longing to connect with their
most distant roots. The giant 5,000-year-old megalithic construction
evokes awe and wonderment, and a keen sense of melancholy for the
community of people who created and fashioned it from stone and earth in
the remote past, a people now lost to time. For the past two centuries,
archaeologists, antiquarians, writers and researchers have been probing
Newgrange in the hope of revealing something about its purpose, and
something about the mysterious people of the New Stone Age who created
giant structures using primitive technology. What has become clear from
these investigations is that Newgrange is a uniquely special place, and
that its construction was carried out not by a grizzly mob of grunting
barbarians, but rather by an advanced agrarian community who had
developed keen skills in the sciences of astronomy, engineering and
architecture. In "Newgrange: Monument to Immortality", writer and
researcher Anthony Murphy goes deep into the mind and soul of his
Neolithic ancestors to attempt to draw forth some answers to these
questions. In a deeply moving, poetic and philosophical exploration, he
looks beyond the archaeology and the astronomy to reveal a much more
profound and sacred vision of the very spirit of the people who were
driven to such marvellous and wondrous efforts.
