The Durability of Stories
powerful stories prove difficult to untell, even after thousands of years
In June of 2020, an extraordinary paper, “A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society”, was published in the research journal Nature. It detailed a far-reaching genetic study of the remains of 2 Mesolithic and 42 Neolithic individuals from ancient Ireland and compared them with previous data from a further 16 Neolithic and Early Bronze Age individuals from across Europe. During the early Neolithic, farming became a primary means of subsistence here and monument building began on a massive scale, suggesting a degree of social organization, technological sophistication, and complexity of belief and ritual previously unseen in Europe’s Mesolithic hunter-gatherer population. (The paper is behind a paywall; a summary article can be found here.)
A sensation was caused by the revelation that remains of a man buried in one of the three inner chambers at Newgrange, Ireland’s grandest and perhaps most famous ancient monument, was the product of incest. While this might make a salacious story in and of itself, this was not the focus of the study. The single example of incest appears to be unique among the many samples studied; however, taken alongside comparative examples from Ancient Egypt, Peru, and Hawaii, the high degree of relatedness among the samples seems to indicate that “marriages,” or at the very least matings, among those sampled were constrained among certain dynastic families associated with the megalithic structures.
An underlying pattern to a largely invisible society begins to emerge through the interweaving of these genetic samples with the archaeology. Here, it would seem to me, the authors of the study are able to partially reconstruct a picture of a migrating people who begin to settle, bringing their unique technologies and beliefs with them, adapting them to a new environment, and gradually displacing the local population—with some exceptions, who also emerge in the genetic sample, perhaps somewhat like the Romanized Britons many millennia later who, for whatever reasons, adopted the culture of the newcomers. An elevated class of rulers, priests, or both emerge who appear to consolidate power among a few interrelated dynastic families which orchestrate the building of megalithic ritual monuments and are eventually buried within them.
While the study ultimately aims to better understand the distribution of political power and social organization through an understanding of the individuals buried in these monumental structures and how they may have been related to one another, I was struck by something else when I read the article:
The Brú na Bóinne passage tombs appear in Medieval mythology that relates their construction to magical manipulations of the solar cycle by a tribe of gods, which has led to unresolved speculation about the durability of oral traditions across millennia. Although such longevity seems unlikely, our results strongly resonate with mythology that was first recorded in the eleventh century ad, in which a builder-king restarts the daily solar cycle by copulating with his sister. Fertae Chuile, a Middle Irish placename for the Dowth passage tomb (which neighbours Newgrange), is based on this lore, and can be translated as ‘Hill of Sin’ or ‘Hill of Incest’.
Source: “Time, Memory, and the Boyne Necropolis,” by John Carey: www.jstor.org/stable/20557214
Dowth (south) and Newgrange share the same Midwinter solar alignment. However, compared to Newgrange and Knowth, Dowth today is in a sad state of ruin due to a shoddy 1847 excavation attempt which employed dynamite, and general lack of interest.
It may seem utterly implausible that a story from so far in the remote past could have survived thousands of years into recent memory, even in such altered and mythologized form, but there are other instances of exactly this. When I read the article in Nature, I ran to pull my trusty copy of Circles of Stone, by Aubrey Burl from the shelf to search for these curious passages:
…the round barrow at Rillaton, ‘the farm by the ford with a slab on it’, on Bodmin Moor, close to the Hurlers stone circles, for years was reputed to be the home of a Druid whose spectre would give passers-by a drink from a gold cup. When this Bronze Age barrow was opened in 1818, as well as the expected bones and flints, the excavators actually found a lovely, ribbed vessel of thin, beaten gold. This may have been coincidence. Many other round barrows, supposedly concealing hoards of riches, have contained only cremations, pots and a few trinkets. (Circles of Stone, by Aubrey Burl, pg 10)
And then there is this:
…a now destroyed round cairn near Mold, Bryn-yr-ellyllon, ‘the hill of the goblins’, which was said to be haunted by the golden ghost of a giant… when the cairn was excavated and levelled a tall skeleton was found in it with hundreds of precious amber beads and a gorgeous cape of gold…(Circles of Stone, by Aubrey Burl, pg 10)
Burl also relates how at Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb, though the light box above the entrance to the passage was blocked up when the passage was closed five thousand years earlier and its existence remained unknown, locals told legends of the rising sun illuminating a three-spiral stone at the end of the chamber. However, this phenomenon was impossible without the open light box. It wasn’t until the monument was fully excavated in 1962-75 and the light box was revealed and reopened that the stories were proved true.
The light box above the passage leading into Newgrange and the decorated curb stone before it.
He cites several other instances of similar folk traditions proving surprisingly durable, relevant, and valuable in understanding archeological evidence on the ground, from lunar alignments to various sacrificial remains. So it seems worthwhile to consider that this myth about Dowth might also contain some kernel of truth, considering that it has also been partially corroborated by hard evidence. While not proof, it is certainly an interesting coincidence. And true coincidences are rare. Clearly the story has been embellished, distorted, and faded with time, as all stories are, and where myth and science meet is a potentially hazardous crossroads. It is one we should approach with caution, but one we should not avoid out of hand.
Perhaps more impressively, for all this lore to have survived so long, it clearly held meaning for the people preserving it, metaphorically mapping their landscape, their history, and their relationship to both. Against the odds, it survived successive waves of migration, invasion, conquest, colonization, plague, famine, wide-ranging religious and cultural change, and things we likely can’t begin to imagine. As is clear from the story of the incestuous union, not all of the tales were flattering or heroic to those who told them, nor were they even ancestral to the people doing the telling, who had since been replaced by waves of Bronze Age immigrants. Across the region, migrants from the Eurasian steppes, Celtic speakers, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans. etc. would arrive on those shores and yet somehow preserve these ancient stories in some form. The Dowth lore itself bears the narrative marks of each successive culture, having been interwoven with Celtic mythology, then dressed with medieval biblical references and values, becoming part of a broader tapestry of shared culture and heritage.
But it survives, as does the place that inspired it. In a precarious moment when we have come to view the past’s events, figures, and monuments as disposable—emendable to our passing preferences, deleting those we find inconvenient or unpleasant—it is even more remarkable to think that successive peoples actively preserved, incorporated, and passed down stories connected with their local landscape for millennia, regardless of how strange and even taboo their contents may have been. I, for one, am grateful to them.
It seems incredible that stories preserved by word of mouth alone could have lasted so long, enduring through two hundred generations, surviving the antagonisms of history and the hostility of evangelical Christians whose missionaries strove to expunge all traces of heathenism. Yet this may have happened in a few cases, and a deeper, more sympathetic approach to our folklore might reveal insights into antiquity that archaeology, with its dependence upon material remains, can never recapture. (Circles of Stone, by Aubrey Burl, pg 10)