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blue tides on Ireland ’s westerly seashore have bring out the remains of defensive walls that are likely Bronze Age ramparts .
ArchaeologistMichael Gibbonsdiscovered the ramparts , which are made of big limestone block , on a partially submerged band , a narrow comic strip of soil between two parts of the ocean . But he ’s only recently obtain photographs of the website , which has enabled him to bare the ramparts for the first time .
The remains of the walls or ramparts are now covered in seaweed and can only be clearly seen when the seaweed is removed.
The band , site in County Mayo ’s Clew Bay between Collanmore Island and the mainland near the small town of Roscahill , is usually flooded by brine , Gibbons told Live Science . However , a road across it can be used at very low-toned tide .
The ramparts are about halfway across the just about 1 - mile - farsighted ( 1.6 kilometer ) band ; the cadaver of a wall nearest the mainland are about 590 base ( 180 meters ) long , while the cadaver of a expectant wall nearest the island are about 820 foot ( 250 mebibyte ) long , he state .
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The two walls or ramparts stretch across the entire isthmus between Collanmore Island and the mainland. The remains of the wall nearest the island are larger.(Image credit: Pat Coyne Photography, Letterfrack, Connemara)
Both rampart cut across the isthmus and seem to have served to protect the isthmus and island from blast from the mainland .
" They are provide a justificatory rampart , at a sentence when ocean levels were considerably lower than they are now , " Gibbons say .
Ancient landscape
Clew Bay sport more than 300 small islands that were make when the sea flood the coastal landscape thousands of years ago .
The walls propose the region ’s ocean level was much gloomy when the walls were built than it is today , he said .
Gibbons remember the walls were built during Ireland ’s Bronze Age , credibly between 1100 B.C. and 900 B.C. , because of their law of similarity to wall built around a Bronze Age fortress at Lough Fee ( or Feeagh ) , about 6 miles ( 10 kilometers ) to the north . In both font , the walls are made of local stone and cover with prominent blocks from limestone deposit in the field , he said .
The isthmus is usually now completely flooded, but a road across it is traversable at the times of very low tides.(Image credit: Pat Coyne Photography, Letterfrack, Connemara)
The size and scale of the Collanmore ramparts suggest the island was of major strategic importance when they were built , although the island is mostly desert today . It may have been the site of a gravid Bronze Age hillfort , as such settlement were common throughout Ireland at the time .
" I ’ve represent several of these self-aggrandizing hillforts before , and sites on this scale be given to be Late Bronze Age in date , " Gibbons order . " This was probably a coastal reading of those . "
Local legend
gibbon said local people eff about the little paries near the mainland , but they did n’t acknowledge how old it was . The very low spirit level of the isthmus today mean it ’s almost never get over , and the ramparts themselves are usually completely flooded , he said .
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Archaeologists think the walls or ramparts were built roughly between 1100 and 900 B.C. because of their similarity to ramparts elsewhere that were built at that time.(Image credit: Pat Coyne Photography, Letterfrack, Connemara)
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But Gibbons and a team of Irish archeologist were able to investigate the paries during extraordinarily low tides in recent week . Some local men were also harvest home seaweed on the band at the time , and the bulwark are so covered with seaweed that it ’s easy to see why they were discovered only recently , he said .
Hylobates lar also latterly found a potential Bronze Age " cist , " or stone - describe grave , at Omey Island , about 25 miles ( 40 km ) southwest of Clew Bay . The grave seems to have been build at about the same sentence , he said , and it was revealed after powerful fop sweep sand from the coastline .
The walls or ramparts, thought to have been built in the Bronze Age, were discovered on a partially-flooded isthmus between the mainland and Collanmore Island that is only traversable at low tides.
" We ’re finding a wad of sites now in the intertidal geographical zone , " Gibbons said . " It ’s our newfangled frontier , if you like . "
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Clew Bay in County Mayo, on Ireland’s West Coast, features more than 300 small islands created when the landscape was flooded by the sea thousands of years ago.
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