Well, we lucked out today, cloudy and cold, but nowhere near as much rain as we experienced yesterday.
We joined the ocean at Kenmare Bay.
We drove the Shea Head to the Dingle Bay.
Then we gasped at the Great Blasket Island.
The Blasket Islands were inhabited until 1953 by a completely Gaelic speaking population. The inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland on November 17th, 1953. The population had dwindled to only 22 inhabitants as the young had emigrated and not returned. Many of the inhabitants ended up in Springfield, Massachusetts.
We stopped in the town of Dingle for lunch. Dingle is the third largest fishing port in Ireland.
We found a spot for oysters. They were labeled Glenbeigh
The Dingle Peninsula is a rugged and beautiful area. The rocky area gives building materials for fences and houses as well as these beehive structures.
The huts or Clochan are a corbelled, drystone construction. Similar to the church with the stone roof I spoke of a few days ago.
Ireland is a very ancient country as many know. The tombs of Newgrange in County Meath date to 3200 BC making them older than both Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids.
The question of the date of corbelled huts is a difficult and complex one. The corbelling technique has been known in Ireland since the Neolithic Period when corbelled vaults were constructed to roof passage-tombs.
The Irish have been embarking on a DNA project to determine how old the Irish are. Scientists have able to identify a particular genetic pattern in the Y chromosome of the Irish. An ancient genetic marker, known as haplogroup 1, was found in most Irish men. Scientists think that most of the population of Western Europe carried this gene over 10,000 years ago. Over time, however, through the movement and mixing of peoples, this gene was diluted throughout Europe.
Scientists have shown most of the genes present in the Irish of today came from the people who were living at the time of Newgrange. These people were the descendants of the ancient hunter-gatherers of Europe.
I will finish with a little fun with Gaelic. The sign reads phonetically as “Crack House”.
