Page 13 - Demo

Chapter One 13 The Stone Age
Visit the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin, and you will see several glass cabinets illed with stone knives, arrow-heads, hammers, axe-heads and sundry other utensils. In some instances these stone artefacts are so crudely fashioned that an average individual could hardly tell that they are not merely an eclectic gathering of ordi- nary run-of-the-mill bits of stone. But as one moves on from cabinet to cabinet the displayed artefacts present a diferent spectacle, they become more skilfully fashioned, sharpened, and polished, and some are even made from wood.
These tools and weapons are the work of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, a race of whom we have very little knowledge. In fact we only know these people as “Mesolitic” or more commonly “Stone Age” people.
It is not possible to give exact dates for events which took place so far back in the distant past, therefore it is also not possible for us to know with any certainty where the irst Irish dwellers came from, or for that matter, how long it is exactly since they irst inhabited the land of Ireland. The oldest remains of Stone Age man in Ireland are believed by many to date from about 8000 B.C., over ten thousand years ago, but of course it is possible that man may have been here even earlier than that.
Regrettably, we have no knowledge of the language, traditions or customs of these early inhabitants, but that being said, we do have a questionable/shadowy concept of their ways of life.
What we know for certain is that Stone-Age Ireland was very unlike the Ireland of to- day. It was densely wooded, with large portions of the unwooded land covered with lakes and vast areas of impenetrable swamp. There were no roads, no towns, no vehicles and the