Everyone Thought This 4,000-Year-Old Tomb Had Been Destroyed. Then, an Archaeologist Found It

Billy Mag Fhloinn located the Altóir na Gréine, thought to have vanished in the 19th century, in southwest Ireland

Sarah Kuta
Daily Correspondent

January 30, 2024 3:13 p.m.



Archaeologist and folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn rediscovered the Altóir na Gréine, or the "Altar of the Sun," in Ireland. Seán Mac an tSíthigh

A 4,000-year-old tomb has been rediscovered in Ireland—more than 170 years after it was thought to have been destroyed.

The tomb is called Altóir na Gréine, which means the “Altar of the Sun” in Irish. In 1838, an English aristocrat named Georgiana Chatterton visited and sketched the site, writing in her travel journal that she’d found “a curious piece of antiquity once an altar, supposed to have been used for offering sacrifices to the sun,” according to Seán Mac an tSíthigh of RTÉ News, which first reported the story.

In 1852, however, the antiquarian Richard Hitchcock visited the site and concluded that the tomb had been dismantled, perhaps so that its stones could be reused elsewhere. Since then, researchers assumed that Altóir na Gréine was no more. But Billy Mag Fhloinn, an Irish archaeologist and folklorist at Sacred Heart University, wondered if the tomb’s remains still existed.

“I was just struck by the mystery of this thing being missing—and, in a way, the drama of the location itself along the ridge of that hill,” Mag Fhloinn tells McClatchy’s Moira Ritter. “It was something that I just wanted to tie together. I just felt like there’s an unanswered question here.”

He started building a photogrammetric model using images he’d taken of the site, which is located near his home in southwest Ireland. A few months ago, the researcher spotted a stone that reminded him of Chatterton’s sketch.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lost-tomb-rediscovered-ireland-180983662/