History of the Irish state to 1014 - National Library of Scotland

I EARLY PEOPLES3fillar-stones may have been first set up by the NeoHthicpeople as sepulchral monuments ; the long reverencethat attached to them may be seen in a record of theAnnals of the fall in 999 a.d. of Lia-Ailbe, the chiefmonument of Mag Breg ; and of how Mael Seachlinnthe high-king made four mill-stones out of it—whetheras an act of war or defiance we cannot say. The Neolithicpeoples were probably architects also of the cromlech orstone circle surrounding a central grave ; and the dolmen,a double series of huge stones embedded in the earth toform the avenue of approach and to support a giganticslab over the tomb. The dolmen of Howth with itsmassive top-stone weighing about ninety tons gives someidea of the skill and the organization of these ancientpeoples.The harsh conditions of the Stone Age were reHevedby a change in climate, and by the intelHgence of man.After the retreat of the ice, and subsequent uplifting ofthe land, the temperature rose {c. 3000 e.g.) some fourdegrees higher than it is now, so that it was possible totill the hill-sides for eight to twelve hundred feet higherthan the present level. Life became easier, food moreplentiful, movement to new homes less arduous, andwinter floods less severe. The immense forests werewidely inhabited by neolithic peoples. Man for hispart made the discovery of copper, and its uses, notonly for implements of defence and of hunting, but forwar against the forest and for tillage. In the south andwest of Ireland copper was plentiful, and in the oldworkings of Waterford and Cork we can see where theprimitive men laboriously dug it out of the earth withstone tools and deer-horn picks. Small knife-daggers ofcopper, halberds for battle, celts and hatchets used forcutting trees or for slaying enemies, have been foundover the whole country, and even moulds for casting thecopper implements. With the invention of hardeningthe soft copper by a mixture of tin the Copper Agepassed into the Bronze Age, which lasted perhaps fifteen