Knowledge of how to make bronze, an alloy of copper and ten percent tin appears to have arrived in Ireland from Europe as an established technology. The tin and gold in Ireland was probably imported from Cornwall in southwest England. Bell Beaker vessels, some of which were highly decorated, were replaced by bowls (low profile), and elongated vases and urns.
Cashel Man is bog body (a human cadaver mummified in a peat bog) found and recovered from a bog near Cashel in County Laois, Leinster, which had been intentionally covered with peat after his death around 2000 BC, making it the oldest fleshed bog body of Europe.
Beltany stone circle (2100-700 BC), County Donegal, Ulster, one of the largest in Ireland, takes its name from the Celtic Beltaine (May) festival. Today Beltany has sixty-four stones of varying height and width enclosing an earthen platform
By the Middle Bronze Age (1500-1150 BC). the dagger had evolved into dirks, rapiers and halberds. Neck ornaments included gold torks (neck-rings) and gold lunulae (crescent necklets), both of which were exported to Britain.
During the Late Bronze Age (1150-500 BC) burials were rare and there were no ceramics for several centuries. By the first millennium BC craftsmen were producing trumpet horns, socketed axes, sheet-bronze buckets, cauldrons and swords.
True swords are leaf-shaped which makes them effective for slashing as well as stabbing. The first of these is called the ‘Ballintober’, named after a site in County Mayo, Connacht. Circular shields also occur, such as the fifty centimetre shield found in Lough Gur, County Limerick, Munster.
The richest and most abundant Irish metalwork occurred during the Dowris Phase (850-600 BC), named from a rich hoard found at Dowris, Co. Offaly, Leinster. Until the 600 BC, gold jewellery of superb quality was produced, together with tools, weapons, trumpets and other kinds of objects in bronze.
From 1000 BC people began to build settlements on hilltops, their elevation making them easier to defend than settlements in valleys. These hilltop settlements developed into hillforts, as they are known today. Rathgall hillfort, Co. Wicklow, Leinster, consists of three roughly concentric stone ramparts, with a medieval fourth wall at its centre.
People in wetter areas built settlements called crannogs, dwellings constructed partially or entirely on artificial islands in lakes, rivers or estuaries. At Ballinderry, Co. Westmeath, Leinster, the upper (1) dated from about the eighth century, and the lower (2) from the Late Bronze Age.
Lebor Gabala Erenn
Known in English as ‘The Book of Invasions’, the Lebor Gabala Erenn (LGE) was compiled in the late eleventh century AD from earlier myths, legends and narratives. It is now regarded primarily as myth rather than history, and purports to describe the settlement of Ireland and its history from the Biblical Flood down to the Middle Ages.
The LGE tells of Ireland being subjected to six invasions: those of Cessair, Partholon and Nemed, the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha De Danann and the Milesians. The first four groups were wiped out or expelled from the island; the fifth group represents Ireland’s pagan gods, and the final group represents the Irish people (the Gaels).
Cessair was Noah’s granddaughter. To escape the Flood she and her followers, which included fifty women and three men, sailed to Ireland. When two of the men died, Fintan mac Bochra became the only surviving male. Cassair died and the rest of the women died later during the Flood. Fintan mac Bochra survived as a salmon then turned into an eagle, a hawk and finally back to human form. He lived for 5500 years and became an advisor to the Kings of Ireland.
Three centuries after the Flood, the second wave of settlers led by Partholon, a descendant of Noah through Japheth and Magog, arrived in Ireland. They are credited with introducing cattle husbandry, ploughing, cooking, dwellings, trade, and dividing the island into four. Partholon and all of his people (numbering 5000 men and 4000 women) died of plague in a single week, leaving Ireland uninhabited until the arrival of a third group of settlers thirty years later.
When Nemed, also a descendant of Noah through Japheth and Magog, arrived with his people they found themselves contending with the Fomorians, deities from Ireland’s murky past. After several battles the Nemedians were defeated and forced to give up two-thirds of their grain, milk and children as tribute. The Nemedians eventually rose up and a bloodbath ensued. Only thirty men survived, some sailed to Britain, others to Greece, and some to the far north.
Some two hundred years later the descendants of Nemed who had fled to Greece returned as the Fir Bolg to the now uninhibited Ireland. Their five chieftains divided Ireland into five provinces and a succession of nine High Kings ruled over Ireland for the next thirty-seven years.
Those Nemedians that had fled to the far north returned as the supernaturally-gifted Tuatha De Danann, who are thought to represent the main deities of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland. They demanded half of the island but the Fir Bolg refused and were wiped out during the ensuing struggles. After the final battle the Tuatha enjoyed 150 years of unbroken rule.
Nel, son of Fenius Farsaid (a descendant of Japheth), wed Scota, daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, and they had a son named Goídel Glas. Goídel’s offspring, the Goidels (Gaels) left Egypt at the same time as the Israelites and spent four hundred and forty years wandering the Earth until eventually they reached Spain by sea and conquered it. There, Goídel’s descendant Breogan built a tower from the top of which his son Ith glimpsed Ireland. The ‘sons of Mil’ (the Milesians), i.e. the eight sons of Ith’s brother Mil Espaine, invaded Ireland and came into conflict with the Tuatha De Danann, but eventually they agreed to divide the land between them: the Milesians, ancestors of the Gaels, would live above ground while the Tuatha De Danann would dwell underground.
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