Five monuments discovered in Ireland are thought to have been built to serve as “pathways to the afterlife”. The purpose of such structures, which archaeologists rarely find, may finally be understood.
While cursus from the Neolithic period are more common in Britain, they are rare in Ireland. They are elongated, encircled ditch-like formations in the ground, ranging in length from 350 meters to 10 kilometers.
In 2022, researchers using laser beams managed to unearth Ireland’s first “cursus cluster”. Published on April 25 in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity, James O’Driscoll believes he has solved the mystery of these mysterious structures.
In the study, it was noted that two of the 5 cursus found in Baltinglass were aligned according to the sunrise at the summer solstice and the other two at the autumnal equinox.
Three of the monuments were linked to some important burial sites. O’Driscoll says that it was not possible to see them until they came out of the ditch, and he thinks that this was done deliberately.
“The function of such monuments has always been a thorny issue because we don’t have enough information,” says the researcher, who speculates that the dead were carried from the cursus to the tombs:
But given that some of the sites at Baltinglass may also have been associated with funerary monuments, it made me think that cursus may have been used in burial practices and may have been ceremonial monuments that served as physical routes through which the dead passed into the afterlife.
O’Driscoll also suggests that the sun rising directly behind these burial sites, as seen through the cursus at key points of the year, “may have symbolized the deceased’s final journey from the land of the living to heaven.”
