Solar Empire--Heavens Above

　　Before the pyramids, the Irish built perhaps the mo st remarkable ancient buildings on the surface of our p lanet. In eastern Ireland, a cluster of burial mounds w ere designed to mark the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer and warmer, and a primitive farming people were reassured t hat soon it would be time to plant again. The greatest among them is the prehistoric site at Newgrange, a huge , circular grave some two hundred and fifty feet across .

　　A long stone passageway extends from the entrance t o a great vaulted chamber where the ancients preserved the bones of their dead. Above the entrance, is a recta ngular stone box. The tomb was aligned so a shaft of li ght from the rising sun on the winter solstice would en ter the box, travel down the stone passageway and illum inate the rear of the chamber wall.

　　"Newgrange is one of the oldest structures on Earth . It's older than Stonehenge. It's older than the pyram ids. It probably had a great religious or ceremonial si gnificance. The alignment toward the mid-December date would suggest some form perhaps of celebration, a celeb ration marking the end of winter or the beginning of th e longer days."

　　Many hundreds of miles away on the Salisbury Plain in southern England, is perhaps the best known solar te mple and calendar of the Ancient World. When these mass ive stones were somehow levered into place, Egyptians w ere only beginning to build pyramids, and yet, the awes ome structure at Stonehenge could accurately track the cycles of the sun, moon and stars, suggesting an unders tanding of the cosmos far from primitive. Stonehenge is aligned to the rising and the setting of the sun. At th e summer solstice, the longest day of the year, the sun rises over the marker known as the heel stone. At mid-w inter, it sets at the direct opposite end of the monume nt.