9How Does Notorious Newgrange Actually Channel The Winter Solstice?
On December 21st every year, a beam of sunlight shines into an opening at Ireland’s Newgrange Tomb in County Meath. It lights up the tomb’s floor and as the sun continues to rise it slowly covers the entire chamber in light. Somehow the neolithic farmers who lived 5,200 years ago were able to determine just how to position the construct accurately enough for this to happen.
Newgrange is a huge mound that is 13 meters tall,85 meters in diameter with a 19-mile passage and inner chambers. It’s surrounded by 97 large decorated kerbstones. Some think it was not only a place of burial but of worship. Only the elite was buried there.
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