Newgrange

Photo by Ulf Erlingsson

This is Newgrange, a passage tomb in Ireland. It’s astronomically interesting because light penetrates the depths of the tomb around the winter solstice. Normally you could reasonably argue that this is just a coincidence. After all there are plenty of tombs in Ireland. Sheer chance would suggest at least one would face an astronomically significant target.

At Newgrange though there’s a twist. The entrance is engineered so that even when it was blocked off a window above the entrance allowed light to enter the tomb at midwinter. This window is the wrong shape to structurally useful, like a relieving triangle, so the favoured explanation is that it was inentionally built to allow light to pass through on the right date.

The photo comes from a press release by Ulf Erlingsson who compares the site to a temple of Poseidon described by Plato. This with some other evidence proves that Atlantis can be found in Ireland. So long as there’s a pretty picture which I can say something archaeologically useful about, I’ll be happy to print them with links to Atlantis in Bimini, Bolivia or Birmingham. However as the National Museum of Ireland says: “…we can say that we know of no archaeological evidence which would support Mr Erlingsson’s theory.” If I had a statement where archaeologists said there was no archaeological evidence for my archaeological theory then I doubt I’d release it as a statement supporting my argument. Obviously there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

You can read more about Newgrange at Knowth.com.