Posted on 06/29/2019 11:13:34 AM PDT by BenLurkin
And although the burial mound is much older than the Druids — who lived about 2,000 years ago, if they existed at all — the excavations have cast new light on the ancient inhabitants of the island of Anglesey.
Overlooking the Irish Sea from the northwest corner of Wales, Anglesey is dotted with numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments. The most famous is the 5,000-year-old passage tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu (Welsh for "the mound in the dark grove"), which has an entrance passage that aligns with the rising midsummer sun. It was archaeologically excavated in 1928 and 1929, and later reconstructed.
The excavations have shown that the burial mound was built during the Bronze Age, much later than the original Neolithic tomb, while some artifacts could be even older than the tomb, she said. "This suggests that Bryn Celli Ddu has been a special ceremonial location for thousands of years."
At Bryn Celli Ddu, archaeological evidence now suggests that the original tomb was started in the Neolithic period, about 5,000 years ago, and added to over the centuries, she said.
Distinctive pieces of Bronze Age pottery and flint tools were found during the latest excavations, which indicated the burial mound was built around 1,000 years later than the Neolithic passage tomb, she said.
Geophysical surveys and excavations also revealed much older structures and artifacts buried at different locations around the Bryn Celli Ddu tomb, including a circle of Neolithic pits, pieces of Neolithic pottery and the remains of a stone ax.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Burial mound ping
I didn’t know there was doubt about Druid existence.
I dated a Druid once.
She was such a Druish princess.
...sorry...
I thought that they could only date guys named Woody.
And then they invented green beer...
They’re digging up Druish Princesses?
Don’t let King Roland hear of this!
Arrrgh ... you beat me to the punch!
(And the tea cakes too....)
In the absence of archaeological evidence of Druids, some writers have raised the possibility that Julius Caesar made them up. It's an overwhelmingly minority position on the question!
As they say in the ancient history biz, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
My Irish Grandmother claimed that there were rumours that one of our relatives was Welsh, but some of us remain sceptical.
Don’t let King Roland hear of this!
Or Dark Helmet!
I read that the Roman armies wiped out the Druids two thousand years ago.
Today’s “Druids” are just Johnny-Come-Lately wannabes.
Today’s Druids have no connection to the original.
They’re British hippies.
My Welsh family had some Irish ancestry. People moved to Wales to work in the mines when they were booming.
I think they became fashionable for young UK nobs in the late 1800s. Sort of Victorian Age hipsters, Churchill joined the society. Help his political career to show he was one of “cool crowd”.
lol
Neat. My Grandmother and father had black hair and brown eyes. I guess that’s not unusual for the Welsh.
My grandma, whose parents were Welsh immigrants, said the Welsh were either tallish and blond like my dad and some of her brothers; or small and dark like my uncle and some of her other brothers. Seems like my “dark” uncles were the wild ones.
Her dad went down to the mines when he was 8 but changed jobs after 50 years because the damp was affecting his singing voice. A guy’s got to have priorities ;-)
Thanks BenLurkin.
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