Newgrange is a passage grave aligned , like a few major monuments , on a solstice . It also has a huge amount of rock art in and around the monument most attempts at explaining the “meaning” markings tend to consider the whole corpus and their context , not a handful without consideration of context .
Unlike the spirals on the entrance stone K 1 ,the sun does not shine directly on the triple double spirals of C10 .“It has two joined vertical spirals with a third “ pulling” the two joined to the north east corner of the chamber “
There is no suggestion of any “pulling “ and I have never seen it mentioned previously by any commentators . On the contrary , what has been noted by others including the excavator O ‘Kelly ‘In order to integrate the left hand spiral into the design the two free ends of its outermost double coil were separated so as to sweep concentrically round the two other spirals and to meet again having encircled the S-spirals. ‘ .Further , if the spiral was doing any “pulling “ it would be to the north west not the north east thus ruining the analogy .
Geometric motifs like Lozenges are often found on lintels (there are approx 49 different stones with lozenges and triangles, sometimes together , at Newgrange ) and at specific places in monuments that are not aligned on solstices ,what is important is their architectural setting i.e. lintels and thresholds .
A wonderful image of clan representatives filing into the passage to check the meter to see that everything was working fine for yet another year should be inspirational for the graphic comic books , was there a lottery to become a rep ? You don’t have to build monuments like Newgrange to check if the solstice rise spot is going to change . Like most monuments of that type the passage was sealed ,and as we learning they were not open too long ,which would make the effort even more futile .
Whilst extreme climate change might lead to an upsurge in monument building there is nothing like extreme changes in Ireland or NW Europe prior to the centuries before the build of Newgrange the millennium before 3200 BC appears to have been very stable and relatively dry . Furthermore there are no mentions in ethnography of marking solstices or astro events in order to understand the climate , it’s always calendrical or related to cosmology .
Everything centres on ‘If this were the purpose of the monument ‘ a massive ‘if” and we certainly have no reason to believe so .
|
