Page 14 - Demo

14 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
mighty forests, swamps and plains were infested by wild beasts, including bears, wolves, and boars. The inhabitants, who were few in number, ate the flesh of these animals and made clothes and other forms of protection from their hides. It is also known that these people generally lived in small groups near the coast or along the estuaries of rivers, choosing these places because food was more readily available there, and because, as we already men- tioned, inland travel was both demanding and dangerous.
These early inhabitants were unable to write, and in the absence of written records any- thing that we do know about their existence has been gathered together from the study of what remains of their dwellings, and the crude artefacts discovered within and about them. It is universally agreed that these brave, industrious and clever peoples must have lived lives of almost unceasing toil and hardship, where each dawn heralded another day of constant struggles, amongst which were the struggles to stay alive, to provide themselves with food and clothing, and to protect themselves from the ferocious animals who roamed the land at will. We can guess that they worshipped a panoply of gods and goddesses, including the powers of Nature-the sun and moon, the stars, the sea, the rivers, and the changing cli- mate, all of which were, to those people, mighty and powerful deities who either assisted or
destroyed them at their own will.
Yet, these primitive individuals not only managed to survive the vicissitudes of the time, they surmounted them and they progressed, with no weapons or tools except stones chipped, edged and sharpened by other stones.
Later, in the period known as “The Neolitic” or “New Stone Age” period, with the ar- rival of other settlers, the inhabitants acquired several new skills and as a result they began to diversify their customs and way of life. They started to keep flocks and herds, to clear the land and till the fields, grow corn and make bread. It was towards the end of the Stone-Age,
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