I just returned from a magical journey through ancient, sacred Ireland. Each time I travel to Celtic lands with a group of spiritual pilgrims, I fall more deeply in love with the land and the ancestors. What struck me this time is, that whether I am looking at an abbey from the 500s, or the remains of Neolithic stone fences from 6000 years ago, I feel a familiarity… truly, some things never change. When I see a reconstruction of a family scene from 2500 BC in a museum, it seems like I have seen these people before.
On my recent trip, we visited the Céide Fields on a remote north facing coast in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. It was very recent, in the 1990s, that a farmer dug up some evidence of an ancient farming civilization in this part of the Western Isle. What was discovered was an entire culture of farming and domesticated cattle raising that had been buried under the bog for 5500 years. Here is a map of the stone fences that still lie under deep bog, which grew over the farmland after the weather turned much colder and wetter around 3500 BC.
Here is a photo of modern Irish countryside, with the very same kind of stone fences to separate the fields. Some things do not change. I am so happy to know that a relationship with the land that worked all those eons ago still works. A farmer from 5500 years ago would feel at home today on the same land 55 centuries later.
It is the same in other cultures. One could recognize similar Egyptian dress customs on ancient papyrus or on a modern fashion runway. Some things, which express a culture, do not change over time.
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This helps me feel connected to my own ancestors and it helps me feel connected to everyone else on the planet, because we all have our own ancestors who share many, many similarities with us. We, truly, are all kin.
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