The first consideration in examining Ireland is its geography. It is a large island off the rim of Europe with a larger island between it and the continent. Ireland separated from the continental landmass as the Ice Age was receding, but before Britain had separated. This explains the relative paucity of wildlife species. That fact, rather than their banishment by St. Patrick, explains the absence of snakes in Ireland. Topographically, Ireland is like a saucer, that is, it consists of a mountainous rim and a lower level of land in the center, but with one bit of the rim broken, which opens to the island's richest plain: the Boyne valley, whose central river empties into the Irish Sea on the east and which was the inevitable path taken by many invaders.
The earliest human inhabitants of the island were hunter-gatherers living more than 8,000 years ago. Several millennia later, in the new Stone Age, settlers arrived who planted crops and raised animals. Extensive relics of this era in the form of houses, pottery, and tools survive. These Neolithic farmers were more than self-sufficient, as they constructed megalithic tombs, such as that at Newgrange in County Meath, which indicate a remarkable degree of engineering and astronomical knowledge. The passageway in it is angled in a way to allow the inner chamber to be illuminated by the rays of the Sun only at daybreak of the shortest day of the year. Within the next two millennia, Bronze Age settlers came with weapons, jewelry, and tools, and they built artificial islands or crannogs within lakes as dwelling places.
World History
