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EMARA the town from the Neolithic period to the Vikings, though relatively modern, is in the heart of a landscape which has taken over 750 million years to evolve. Its geology is one of the most complex and interesting in Europe. Today's landscape was shaped by a series of ice-ages or glaciations. The last cold period, when the Connemara mountains were topped by ice sheets, ended only ten-twelve thousand years ago. With the melting of the ice sheets the area was rapidly colonised by flora, fauna and finally by man. The first people to arrive about 7,000 years ago were small bands of hunter-gatherers. They followed migrating herds of animals, fish and fowl along the river valleys and coastlines. The earliest known artifact is from Oughterard in Lough Corrib, a Bann Flake which would have been used as an arrow head. These nomadic people left little else behind except midden sites (ancient refuse dumps) along the coastlines of Connemara at Ballyconneely, Omey Island and Dog's Bay, near the village of Roundstone.
Its heart is the Twelve Bens and Maumturk Mountains, but the area known in modern Irish as “Iar- Chonnacht” stretches from Lough Corrib to Slyne Head and Killary Harbour. Its wild and desolate landscape, created about 460 million years ago, and later reshaped by glaciation, contributes to a magical atmosphere rich with legends and sites.
During the Neolithic period (c. 4000 BC), farming was introduced and animals were domesticated. Many of their farmsteads and megalithic tombs (over 35) can be found along the fertile river valleys, around the village of Clifden (in Irish, An Clochán meaning "bee-hive cell"). Here they exploited the rich marble deposits. Polished marble beads and axes were traded as prestige grave goods. Three of the four classic tombs types are found in these Connemara valleys, and in addition we find a variety of unclassified tombs. The concentrations of tombs is one of the highest in Ireland and is unique in the diversity of tomb types. Their spectacular locations afford magnificent views.
Bronze Age people (2500-700 BC) have left us an equally impressive legacy of burial and ritual monuments. Consisting of an array of single Standing Stones, Stone Pairs and Stone Alignments (often up to seven stones). Recent excavations indicate that these stones were used to mark burials with perhaps a dual function of boundary markers. The Alignments were spectacular 3000-year old calendars which were part of an elaborate cult related to the events surrounding the winter solstice. These were built with granite boulders and carefully quarried blocks of white quartz stone. To complement the burial evidence we are now discovering the settlement areas, complete with houses and fields, dating to the Bronze Age, and in particular the discovery of Fulachta Fiadha (cooking sites) is indicating increased population. A cluster of Fulachta Fiadha can be found on Inishlyon, east of Inishbofin, and on Inishark, west of Inishbofin. Both of these islands are now deserted. The extensive deposits of soapstone, copper and gold bearing ores made it a particularly attractive place to live in prehistoric times.
The Iron Age or Celtic period in Connemara (600BC - 400AD) brought with it troubled times, which required the construction of cliff-bound forts (Dún Mór and Dún Gráinne on Inishbofin), hilltop forts and lake forts. Like the more famous on Aran, Dun Aengus, these were fortified villages used as places of refuge, in times of war. Lake forts (Crannógs) are a distinctive feature of the Connemara lakes; good examples are visible at Bola and Scannive. These are man-made or man-modified islands, circular or oval in shape, usually with a wooden palisade with house sites inside. Surprisingly, these island forts are also found all along the west coast and in the Outer Hebrides off the Scottish west coast. The Irish language began to emerge as a distinct language about this time, combining elements introduced from the Continent and indigenous forms of speech surviving here since prehistoric times. Roughly half of Connemara remains Irish speaking.
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