Céide Fields facts for kids
The Céide Fields (Irish: Achaidh Chéide, meaning flat topped hill fields) is an amazing ancient site on the north coast of County Mayo in western Ireland. It's about 7 kilometres northwest of Ballycastle. This place is the biggest Neolithic (New Stone Age) site in Ireland. It also has the oldest known field systems in the world! Scientists have used different ways to figure out its age. They found that the Céide Fields were created and developed about 5,500 years ago, around 3500 BCE.
This special site is so important that UNESCO is thinking about making it a World Heritage site. This would mean it's protected for everyone to learn from and enjoy.
Discovering the Ancient Farm
The story of finding the Céide Fields began in the 1930s. A schoolteacher named Patrick Caulfield was cutting peat (a type of soil made from decayed plants) for fuel. He noticed piles of rocks that were uncovered as he worked. Patrick realized that these rocks must have been placed there by people. Their arrangement was clearly not natural. What made it even more interesting was that the rocks were found *below* the bog. This meant they were there before the bog grew, showing they were very, very old.
The true importance of this discovery wasn't fully understood for another forty years. That's when Patrick's son, Seamus, who had studied archaeology (the study of human history through digging up old things), decided to investigate further. His research showed a complex network of fields, houses, and large stone tombs (megalithic tombs). All of these had been hidden by the growth of thick blanket bogs over many centuries.
Exploring and Protecting the Site
To protect this important site and keep learning from it, a clever method was used to explore the hidden fields. Workers used long iron rods with cross handles to gently probe the ground. This helped them find and map the hidden stone walls without digging everything up. These rods were already used locally to find old fallen trees buried under the bog.
Once the walls were mapped, archaeologists carefully dug up some areas. They found ancient homes and tombs. These discoveries showed how people lived 200 generations ago! They were a large community of farmers. They cleared huge areas of pine forests to make space for their farms. We know this because pollen from pine trees is found in the peat. Their main way of life was raising cattle. But there were also skilled craftspeople and builders among them, working with both wood and stone.
Scientists discovered that when these ancient people arrived, the land was covered in thick forests. They cut down these trees to create arable land (land good for farming). They also used the wood for building and firewood. They kept clearing more and more trees as they needed more firewood and space.
The climate back then was much warmer than today. This meant plants could grow almost all year round. Samples from the remains of trees found in the bog clearly show this warmer climate.
For a while, these farmers did very well. But then, some changes happened that led to the growth of raised bogs. The good farming land slowly turned into barren, unusable land. Many experts believe that removing all the trees helped cause this big change. When there are lots of trees, most of the rain stays on the leaves and branches. It either gets soaked up by the trees or evaporates back into the air. But when the forests were gone, all the rain hit the ground directly. It's thought that this washed away the important nutrients from the soil. Evidence for this idea is the presence of an ironpan (a hard layer of iron-rich soil) found in the subsoil beneath the Céide Fields.
