This is me at a neolithic wedge tomb in the Burren region of western Ireland. The Burren is an area of rocky, starkly beautiful limestone hills. There are hundreds of these tombs in the Burren, mostly, like this one, sitting in cow pastures a short hike from the road.
This tomb is about 5,000 years old. To put that in perspecive, it’s 3,000 years before Christ, and before the rise of Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, or any other known empire.
There are a few things about this that amaze me. One is that I was able to walk right up to this incredibly ancient monument, climb into the entrance and take a picture. There were no big concession stands or signs around the tomb, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. Another is that this tomb, and the dozens of others like it in the Burren, has been standing intact in this spot for 5,000 years. But the most amazing thing is that, 5,000 years ago, there were people much like me living and dying on the Burren rocks. Near many of the tombs are small stone circles that probably are the ruins of their homes. Here they worked and told stories and smiled at their children and ate and crapped and had sex and hoped and prayed and died. And 5,000 years later, I am a person from a time and place and culture that would have been incomprehensible to them, standing on their grave, smiling for the camera, transmitting my ghostly image to places they never knew existed. As Ted “Theodore” Logan would say, “whoa!”