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The Neolithic Origins of Halloween - Ep 4
168 Plays1 month ago
Journey to the ancient tombs of Ireland as we delve into the history behind Halloween's earliest roots. Explore the Celtic festival of Samhain, where the veil between the worlds thinned, and bonfires blazed atop ancient passage tombs. Discover the Neolithic tombs aligned with the Samhain sunrise, the goddesses and heroes associated with this liminal time, and trace the connections between these ancient rituals and the haunted traditions we celebrate today. This episode reveals the 5,000 year old tombs that helped shape our modern Halloween celebrations.
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Transcript
Introduction to Past Macabre Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Neolithic Origins of Halloween
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the past macabre, where we journey through history to uncover how our relationship with death reflects the values, fears, and hopes that shape the way people live. I'm your host, Stephanie Rice. Thank you for joining me for episode four, The Neolithic Origins of Halloween.
00:00:56
Speaker
where even today the land seems to hum with ancient power. The modern-day celebration of Halloween traces its origins here to the ancient Celtic Fire Festival of Samhain.
00:01:09
Speaker
But thousands of years before the Celts arrived, the Neolithic inhabitants of Ireland were building massive stone tombs that aligned with the Samhain sunrise. They held feasts around bonfires amongst the tombs of their ancestors, and some of these celebrations were even held at the same sites the Celts used for their Samhain feasts later.
00:01:30
Speaker
Let's
From Nomads to Settled Farmers in Neolithic Ireland
00:01:31
Speaker
explore the passage tombs of Ireland, the Samhain myths inspired by them, and the Samhain celebrations that have
00:01:47
Speaker
Humanity first stepped onto the Emerald Isle around 10,000 BCE when the Ice Age glaciers receded enough to make it possible. At first, people lived in nomadic bands beneath the shadows of ancient forests, following the availability of food and moving as the seasons dictated. Then during the Neolithic period, between about 4000 and 2500 BCE, people transitioned from a nomadic lifestyle to settled farming communities.
00:02:17
Speaker
This is also when humans began to leave their lasting mark on the landscape we now call Ireland. As the first domestic herding animals like sheeps and goats and cattle began arriving and more people began farming crops, many of the large ancient forests that had been here since before humanity were
Passage Tombs: Architecture and Celestial Alignments
00:02:37
Speaker
cleared for farmland. With this shift in lifestyle and landscape came a new relationship with death and burials became larger and more elaborate Four different architectural styles of megalithic tombs were used during this time. The largest of these we call passage tombs. Over 200 of these passage tombs still dot the Irish landscape today, and it's likely there are still more waiting to be discovered.
00:03:05
Speaker
Clearing the forests in ancient times allowed for them to be built on high ground, like hilltops or ridges, and they would have been seen from quite a distance. In fact, many of the passage tombs were built to be visible from one another. Settlements were on the lower land nearby, allowing the dead to watch over the living and the living to see and remember the dead.
00:03:28
Speaker
These passage tombs held many people, though it's unclear how everyone within is connected. They could have been all just the entire community. They could have been a singular family. They could have been just the elites from the community.
00:03:44
Speaker
The majority of those interred in passage tombs during the Neolithic period were cremated, and sometimes with personal artifacts such as ivory beads, pendants, or clay pots even. After cremation, their remains were added to the remains of their predecessors into a large shallow stone basin that was placed within the passage tombs.
Celtic Myths and Samhain Rituals
00:04:06
Speaker
These monuments are named for their long, narrow entrance passages with a low ceiling that requires visitors to stoop for about 20 to 50 feet or 6 to 15 meters as they enter the passageway. Once inside the main part of the tomb, it opens up into a central chamber constructed from large stone blocks that rise into a corbelled ceiling.
00:04:31
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Corbelling is a method of stacking large stones in circular rows in a way so that each level hangs over the last just a little bit. This makes the ceiling more narrow with each row and it creates a round vaulted chamber inside of the tomb.
00:04:48
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Once the top was narrow enough, the remaining hole was covered with a single slab of stone. The structure was then covered by a mound of earth, giving the tomb its characteristic rounded, hill-like appearance that we see today. It was then surrounded by a curb cairn, which are circles built with massive stones around the central mound.
00:05:11
Speaker
These tombs were most often built in complexes that had multiple passage tombs, standing stones, water wells, and several single-person megalithic tombs, and sometimes even houses were close nearby. Many of those complexes also have smaller cairns that have no evidence that they were used for burials, though their use is still unclear.
00:05:33
Speaker
Often there were carvings of intricate patterns like concentric circles or the spiraled triskelion. These designs have become the most recognizable part of modern Celtic art, but they predate the Celts by over a thousand years. Many of these tombs were aligned to the solstices.
Construction and Cultural Integration of Passage Tombs
00:05:52
Speaker
Newgrange, for example, is one of the most visited passage tombs in Ireland, and it's aligned so that the rays of the winter solstice illuminate the inner chamber through the passage.
00:06:04
Speaker
These types of alignments are fairly common around the world because the solstice can be measured by anyone willing to dedicate a few years of tracking the sun to note when it rose furthest to the north and then furthest to the south. However, curiously, some of these neolithic tombs, like the ones we'll explore, are aligned to sunrise or sunset on days that are roughly halfway between the solstices and equinoxes.
00:06:32
Speaker
The Keltsu moved into the region later called these days Imyok, Beltana, Lunasa, and Samhain. Just like the monumental funerary complexes of Egypt, the construction of these monuments would have required an impressively well-organized workforce.
00:06:50
Speaker
There would have been people who were essentially architects to design the massive corbelled central chambers and the long passageways. As with most stone structures throughout Ireland, these are dry stone structures, which means that they were built without any mortar. This requires planning and adjusting calculations as the construction progressed to ensure the stones fit together close enough to utilize friction and gravity.
00:07:18
Speaker
This method is what allowed them to withstand the elements better and to keep them in place for millennia. The Irish landscape is very rocky, so quarrying wasn't necessary, but they would have still needed a large number of masons to gather and break up the stones to the sizes that they needed to ensure that the wall was stable. Astronomers would have been needed to calculate the celestial alignments of the tombs based on observations made over years.
00:07:45
Speaker
Artists would have been called on to make the intricate art found all over these megalithic monuments, and general laborers would have been needed to move materials around, assisted placing the stones, cooking for the large workforce, and to support wherever else they were needed.
00:08:02
Speaker
supervisors or administrators would have been needed to organize everyone effectively. It would have been a very, very large operation supported by a large network. Depending on how long it took to construct it, these people may have all been working all at once, or they may have been working with very few groups slowly over time.
00:08:23
Speaker
The construction of passage tombs stopped around 3100 BCE and megalithic construction seems to have ended all together in Ireland by about 1800 BCE. As the centuries passed, these tombs were reused and reinterpreted by successive generations and their origins began to fade from the public memory. During this time, Celtic peoples were migrating westward towards the Atlantic.
00:08:51
Speaker
The exact definition of Celtic has been a hot topic of debate between linguists and archaeologists. Even J.R.R. Tolke weighed in on it and scolded his colleagues for the broad definition of Celtic during one of his lectures at Oxford. There have been Roman documents found that seem to identify specific clans or tribes that the people themselves identified with, but they aren't very detailed and have inconsistencies from source to source.
00:09:19
Speaker
To add to the confusion, a mythological version of these events was written down hundreds of years later by Christian monks. They altered the oral tales that had been passed down for generations to make them more Christianized. The non-supernatural elements of these tales were later taken as fact by 19th century Irish writers and historians. They were attempting to save Irish cultural identity after centuries of oppression and occupation by the English.
00:09:49
Speaker
And since the subject could be an entire episode itself, I'll stick to the broader well-known definition of Celtic that Tolkien disliked, instead of trying to nitpick the different possible clans that could have come to Ireland at different times. The precise origins and route the Celts took is also still debated, but they slowly arrived in Ireland, possibly as traitors at first.
00:10:16
Speaker
The earliest Celtic artifacts found in Ireland so far suggest that only a few elite Celts were the first to move here between about 500 and 400 BCE. They found the ancient passage tombs already standing as sentinels on the landscape, and they were living among people who were generations removed from the original builders.
00:10:39
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Imagine wandering into one of these for the first time, having seen nothing like it before, with only the light of a small fire to illuminate the eerie long passages and the vaulted central chambers with stones jutting out. Shadows caused by the corbeling would have shifted overhead and on the walls in the firelight. Understandably, these tombs became known to the Celts as supernatural places.
00:11:07
Speaker
Legends say that some of them are homes to powerful, malevolent entities called she. Others became known as places where the ancient heroes and gods fell. Many are still viewed as places where the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, and the spirits of the dead can pass through more easily. It's no surprise that many became associated with the fire festival that celebrated death, Samhain.
00:11:37
Speaker
Samhain is the Irish Gaelic name for the month of November and fittingly it means summer's end. It's a liminal time when the day is shortened but the winter solstice hasn't yet arrived. The oldest forms of Samhain festivals were likely to mark the day when herds were brought from their summer pastures to either be kept in small enclosures over the winter or killed for food.
00:12:02
Speaker
any food that couldn't be stored would lead to feasts in celebration of a bountiful year. There is archaeological evidence at several Neolithic sites of large amounts of animal bones and bonfires. For the ancient Celts, it was the beginning of the New Year, not the end. It was, and still is, seen as a time when the world of the living and the world of the dead intertwine.
Samhain's Influence on Modern Halloween
00:12:28
Speaker
Their celebrations began at sunset on October 31st, which they called Iha Haona, which means, Samhain Night. They believed that this was the only time when the spirits of those who had died in the year since the previous Samhain were able to cross over into the other world, or the land of the dead and the gods.
00:12:50
Speaker
They would gather at some of these passage tombs and hold feasts around bonfires to honor their departed and protect themselves from malevolent spirits. According to the Irish mythology that was written down by Christian monks around 1000 CE, many pivotal events happened on Samhain Night. The Morrigan, an ancient Irish Celtic goddess of war, death, and fertility, was associated with the holiday.
00:13:20
Speaker
It was said that on Samhain night was when she met her lover, the Dagda, leader of the gods. According to another myth, the warrior goddess Queen Maeve launched a surprise attack against one of the ancient kingdoms on Samhain. When she arrived, she cast a curse that incapacitated the defending army. Ku-Kulan One of the most famous heroes of the Irish myth single-handedly held off her army for months while his allies recovered. Later, he was mortally wounded in a different battle and died on Samhain with the Morrigan perched on his shoulder in the form of a raven. Samhain was also known as the day that the mythical Tu'a de Danann defeated the demonic sea-dwelling Fomorians and freed themselves from their tyranny.
00:14:12
Speaker
Some researchers have theorized that the legends of the Fomorians were a monstrous embodiment of the death winter can bring, and that they may have been the inspiration behind monsters becoming part of Halloween celebrations. Maybe some of these myths included remnants of the oral stories that the pre-Christian Celts told around the Samhain bonfires.
00:14:35
Speaker
They could even hold small clues to the beliefs that the Neolithic people held, passed on to the Celts that they lived alongside and had families with. But we obviously have no writing or distinctive art to give us definitive answers to these questions. Now let's explore some of these Neolithic passage tombs the ancient Celts incorporated into their myths and celebrations.
00:14:59
Speaker
About 80 kilometers or 50 miles northwest of Dublin is a site called Loch Cru, named for the 17th century Loch Cru estate, that once claimed the land where these Neolithic cairns lie. The land gently rises up into four hills here that form the highest point in the entire area. This site is also known as Sheevna Kyla, meaning hill of the witch or hag.
00:15:24
Speaker
The kylak is almost always depicted as an old woman, and she is a goddess associated with winter, cattle, deer, and rocky mountainous places. According to myth, the cairns were formed from the stones that she dropped from her apron as she jumped from hilltop to hilltop.
00:15:41
Speaker
There are 32 cairns in total marking passage tombs across these hills, but only a few have been excavated so far. They were built in the Neolithic period, but some were reused into the Iron Age, about 3,000 years after their original construction. The hill furthest to the west is called Carnbine West, and it has the highest concentration of cairns.
00:16:06
Speaker
One of these, Cairn L, as it's called by archaeologists, has a very unique standing stone. And unlike any other passage tombs, this stone is within the passage tomb itself.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's a two meter or six and a half foot tall white limestone pillar with spirals and cup and ring marks carved into it. It's known as the Whispering Stone, though no one remembers why anymore. There are similar stones a few miles away known as the Speaking Stones that locals say used to be ancient oracles. Maybe it's the same for the Whispering Stone, but its oracular origin has now been lost.
00:16:44
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Next to it, there's a nook within the chamber that holds a large stone basin for cremated remains. It was carved
Mythology and the Significance of Loch Cru
00:16:52
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too, and behind it there's a large stone wall that has some of the most intricate carvings at all of La Crew.
00:17:00
Speaker
On the first sunrise after Samhain night, the light enters the burial chamber and illuminates the whispering stone. As the sun rises more, the rays move across to the back wall and make the carvings stand out despite the low light within the chamber. It would be amazing if we knew what sorts of rituals took place here in the light of the first dawn of the new year.
00:17:24
Speaker
Next, we'll take a look at the hill furthest to the east. According to the origin myth of the Shiv Nakayla, this final hill was what caused the death of the kylak. This hill is further away from the other three and it turned out to be too far for the kylak. She fell to her death and was buried in the spot that she fell. There was a large passage tomb on top of the hill where is she allegedly fell that's now called Karan Wai.
00:17:53
Speaker
Perhaps this was the tomb of the witch. The hill today is called Patrick's Hill, and early archaeologists who excavated here described Karen Y as the most conspicuous of all upon the hills, indicating that it likely stood at least six meters or 19.5 feet tall, like the main Karens of the neighboring hills. Unfortunately, in the 1840s, the land was cleared for farming, and this Karen was heavily plowed through.
00:18:23
Speaker
All of the stones for Karen Y have been reused for walls separating fields and what remains of the mound could be easily mistaken for a natural hill. Perhaps this is why the main house of the La Cruz state was cursed. According to local lore, the curse said, three times will La Cruz be consumed by fire. Crows will fly in and out of the windows and grass will grow on its doorstep.
00:18:51
Speaker
Three fires did break out, destroying the main house at La Cruz State. First in 1888, then in 1959, and then in 1964. After the third fire, the manor wasn't rebuilt. All that remains of it is the massive Greek-inspired columns from the front of the house that now stand alone like the ruins of an ancient Greek temple.
00:19:15
Speaker
Grass does grow where the front door once stood, and the crows do freely fly through the columns where the windows once were. There are many more interesting things to see at Shiv Nakhila, but we will have to leave that for another time. Now, let's head about 15 kilometers or nine miles to the southwest and explore another Neolithic site with connections to Samhain.
00:19:41
Speaker
Klokta
Klokta: Sacred Fires and Burial Practices
00:19:42
Speaker
is the name of this site and it plays a key role in the mythology and rituals of Samhain. Like Shiv Nikayla, it's named for a goddess who died here. This goddess, Clockda, her name translates to Earthspear, and in some myths, she's implied to be a fertility goddess or a sun goddess. In the later versions of Irish myths, Clockda was a powerful druidess and the daughter of the druid Moghrith. He was a powerful magician in Irish mythology who worshipped the sun, hinting again at Clockda's solar association.
00:20:19
Speaker
Some historians have theorized her association with both the earth and the sun along with having the word for spear in her name may have meant that she was a lightning goddess in earlier periods. It was on this hill that now bears her name that she gave birth to triplets and tragically died during childbirth.
00:20:40
Speaker
It's said that she was buried here at the center of the hill, and her three sons went on to become legendary archdruids and warriors that Irish kings would later claim as part of their ancestry. The myth of Clark de represents the cyclical nature of life and death. Her tragic story mirrored the seasonal changes that were celebrated during Samhain. Her death represents the end of the year, and her children live on just as the new year does.
00:21:07
Speaker
According to texts that were written much later, Klokta's death on the hill became part of the Samhain night rituals, which were centered around the lighting of a sacred fire. Each year on Samhain, all of the fires in Ireland were said to be extinguished, except for the bonfire on Klokta. The people would carry torches from the sacred fire to rekindle all the others across the hills in the valley.
00:21:32
Speaker
It was said that this symbolized the sun's fading power as winter approached and this flame would protect the people of Ireland from the dark of winter. It was also said that this was where trick-or-treating comes from. Animal sacrifices were made to appease the spirits and Celts believed that if no offering was made there would be supernatural consequences.
00:21:54
Speaker
It's not clear exactly when, but at some point these potential supernatural consequences manifested as pranks that people played on one another on Samhain night. This ended up changing over time as well and became part of the trick-or-treat tradition that is a core part of modern Halloween. 17th century historians claimed that human sacrifices were even included to appease the spirits, but there's been no archaeological evidence of that.
00:22:23
Speaker
In 2014, new excavations began that have given us some wonderful insights about the bronze and iron age activity here at Clockta. There is evidence that at the very core of it, there was a Neolithic site of some kind, but a Bronze Age hill fort was built and that was then expanded on several times into the Iron Age. These later layers have made it difficult for archaeologists to get the full picture of what the Neolithic site was like. From what they can tell, the structure itself reflects the characteristic design that's seen in the other passage tombs.
00:22:58
Speaker
It had a stone-lined passage leading to a corbelled burial chamber and a low mound covering the site. Like the other passage tombs, several generations of people were cremated and laid to rest here. It's possible the rumors of human sacrifice came from people finding the remnants of cremated remains on the hill, but we now have more research that shows cremation was pretty normal for burials and passage tombs.
00:23:23
Speaker
Testing done on some of the remaining bone fragments show that the tomb was used from the Neolithic period into the Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, people were buried in the outer layers of the mound and on the hillside nearby.
Hill of Tara and Samhain Legends
00:23:36
Speaker
This shows us that it still held some memory of being a sacred place thousands of years later. Now we'll head another 15 kilometers southwest to one of the most famous archaeological sites in Ireland, the Hill of Tara.
00:23:50
Speaker
According to myth, this was the place where the legendary hero, Cone of the Hundred Battles, was granted his kingship over Ireland. It's said that the supernatural forces of the Otherworld cry out at a stone pillar here called Leofoyl, or the Stone of Destiny, when a true King of Ireland stands on it. The megalithic monument still stands today on the hill of Tara, silently waiting for the next King of Ireland.
00:24:19
Speaker
At the core of the Hill of Tara is a Neolithic passage tomb, like at Klachta, hinting that this was a sacred place for thousands of years before the mythical High Kings of Ireland. The tomb is now known as the Mound of the Hostages because in medieval times it was believed that the Irish kings of old held important hostages here, even the ancient kings of Britain.
00:24:42
Speaker
One of the most enduring myths of Tara is that there were great banquet halls here, where the living and the dead dined together. The Feast of Tara was held during Samhain according to the legend, and it was said to be a royal celebration imbued with mystical importance. The souls of the dead came forth from the other world as honored guests, as did some of the other supernatural inhabitants known as Shi, or what we know as fairies.
00:25:10
Speaker
perhaps some remnant of its original purpose, long before the legends and the kings, is hidden in those tales. The passage of the mound of hostages is a line to capture the first rays of the sown sun, like Shiv Nikayla. This illuminated the chamber, and maybe it was meant to welcome the spirits of the ancestors into the world of the living for this brief, liminal moment.
00:25:35
Speaker
As with other high-profile Neolithic sites, the Passage Tomb was situated in a prominent location, offering views across the landscape. In fact, you can even see many of the other Neolithic monuments from the Hill of Tara on clear days, even as far as Shiv Nakayla, which is a little over 30 kilometers or 19 miles away from here.
00:25:57
Speaker
The construction of these tombs, often in commanding positions within the landscape, suggests a deliberate desire to create monuments that were not only for the dead, but intended for the living to view. We have no way of knowing whether it was simply just to view and remember the dead, or if it was for a grander ritual reason. All we have is a glimpse into a time when the living and the dead were connected through this monumental architecture and a shared ceremonial landscape.
Samhain to All Saints' Day: Christian Influence
00:26:27
Speaker
While later activity has obscured much of the Neolithic landscape, the excavations that have been done so far show a lot of activity stretching back thousands of years. There are later parallel ditches and complex enclosures that suggest a long history of ceremonial and defensive uses for the site. Advanced surveying techniques such as remote sensing and lidar are being used to identify even more possible enclosures and structures that intersect with the main monument.
00:26:57
Speaker
Hopefully soon, more excavations at these previously unknown structures will reveal more of the secrets of Tara to us. As Christianity spread through Ireland in the fifth century, the church attempted to replace these pagan traditions with its own religious holidays and stop the ceremonial activity that was happening at the original sites. November 1st became All Saints Day and November 2nd became All Souls Day, both intended to replace the pagan celebrations honoring the dead.
00:27:28
Speaker
But the old traditions of Samhain persisted, and over time, the festival of Samhain blended with Christian customs. Eventually, the night before All Saints Day, now known as Halloween, became a time of monsters, ghost stories, costumes, and trick-or-treating.
00:27:46
Speaker
As we've seen, many of these elements of modern Halloween have their roots in the ancient Irish traditions of Samhain, like the ancient stories of monsters, the offerings in the form of treats, and the tricks if the spirits weren't satisfied with these offerings.
Revival and Evolution of Samhain Traditions
00:28:02
Speaker
There has even been a Neopagan revival of Samhain, and since 1999, formal celebrations have been held at Kwokda. They honor as close to the original rituals as they can, and they weave it with new forms of celebration. Similarly, Samhain likely had roots in the Neolithic celebrations during this time of year.
00:28:23
Speaker
The cairns of Shiv Nakayla, the sacred fires of Klokta, and the legendary seat of kings at Tara were places to connect both the living and the dead. They remind us that the dead are never truly gone. They live on in our memories, our myths, and the monuments they left behind.
00:28:41
Speaker
Perhaps
Conclusion and Credits
00:28:42
Speaker
some even linger to watch from the shadows of these ancient sacred stones, waiting to trick anyone who doesn't leave them treats. Thanks for joining me on this journey of the Neolithic origins of Halloween. In the next episode, we'll be delving into some of the real-life entrances to the underworld. Until next time, iha hauna juna gree. Have a happy Halloween.
00:29:10
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe to keep up with new releases. Please leave a rating and a comment that helps the show reach others who may be interested in the past macabre. For access to bonus content from all archaeology podcast network shows, become a member at arcpodnet dot com slash members.
00:29:37
Speaker
You can find show notes for this and other episodes at
00:30:17
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.