Ireland's prehistoric site, Europe's largest?

We've more and older archeology than England?

It seems that ancient Irish tales of "hollow hills" (underground caverns in mountains, as in Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" where ogres and supernatural beings dwell) are true. There are hillforts throughout the Emerald Isle. And the largest ever found in Northern Europe has just been uncovered, and it's massive.

Ireland discovery: the largest site ever

What, our pre-Christian roots go way back?

A vast prehistoric settlement hidden in the hills of County Wicklow is forcing archaeologists to rethink how people lived in Ireland more than 2,700 years ago.

What began as a closer look at a single hillfort has revealed a sprawling complex of ramparts, houses, and enclosures that specialists now say may be the largest clustered village ever identified in Ireland and Britain.

The scale of the discovery, and the suggestion that it could be the biggest prehistoric site of its kind in Northern Europe, is already reshaping debates about when urban-style living first emerged on the Atlantic edge of the continent.

We Irish Paddies stand with Palestinians!

The Wicklow hill that turned into a mega‑site

Baltinglass hillfort archeological site (monumentalireland.ie)

The story starts with a familiar landmark in the Irish landscape, a hillfort in Baltinglass that locals have long known as a dramatic feature above the County Wicklow countryside.

Archaeologists had catalogued it as one of several prominent fortified sites in the region, but new survey work has shown that the hilltop is only the core of a much larger complex.

What once looked like a single enclosure now appears to sit within a dense cluster of prehistoric houses and additional earthworks that extend across the slopes and surrounding ridges. More

• Cassian Holt, Morning Overview via MSN (msn.com/AA1Ts3), Jan. 2, 2026; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Hunter gatherers built fortified settlements?

Sure, modern humans had sex with Neanderthals, but only for a very brief time.

Fortified settlement close to Amnya River likely provided resources (Nikita Golovanov).

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Siberian Jesus: Vissarion (MSN)

A hunter-gatherer society in Siberia built one of the oldest fortified settlements 8,000 years ago. The fortress defies expectations because it's one of the oldest found that hunter-gatherers built.

• Hunters and gatherers are wanderers who don't settle down and protect settlements like ranchers and farmers who make war to protect the property they claim. They go about in search of food, living off the land.

Siberians of the past, the Ket: men and children of the Yenisei Ostiaks (wiki)

The inhabitants likely had access to abundant fish and game they may have wanted to protect. A cluster of houses protected by trenches, earthen banks, and wooden stakes baffled archaeologists for decades. 

The settlement dates to the Stone Age, a time researchers once considered too unsophisticated for such structures. Originally, archaeologists believed similar settlements were only about 3,000 years old, Archaeology magazine reported.

But radiocarbon dating from the 1980s showed one was thousands of years older, when hunter-gatherers lived in the taiga, a cold, subarctic forest.

The result was so surprising that some of the researchers doubted their work, archaeologist Tanja Schreiber told Archaeology magazine.

Schreiber and other scientists recently retested objects and mud deposits from the site to confirm the age of a settlement near the Amnya River in western Siberia. They published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity.

The Neolithic settlement is one of the oldest known fortified structures in the world and was constructed hundreds of years earlier than most other similar structures.

These types of defensive fortifications are usually associated with agricultural societies. Researchers long considered more mobile hunter-gatherers incapable of building such sophisticated structures.

A strategic location near the river

Hunter-gatherers occasionally built fortifications in other parts of the world, "but the very early onset of this phenomenon in inland western Siberia is unparalleled," the authors wrote in the paper.

While there are older Stone Age settlements in other parts of the world, like the Göbekli Tepe in Turkey which is estimated to be 12,000 years old, the Siberian settlement is about 2,000 years older than similar structures in Europe, according to Vice.

The settlement's strategic location allowed its residents to lead "a sophisticated lifestyle based on the abundant resources of the taiga environment," Schreiber said in a statement.

The inhabitants may have had access to large populations of fish, birds, elk, beaver, and reindeer. They may have had goods to store and protect food, such as fish oil and frozen meat.

Archaeologists found pottery, slate tools and weapons, and animal bone fragments at the site.

• Oldest human fossils outside Africa push back our timeline…again

Challenging stereotypes of hunter-gatherers

The rectangular houses were between 140 and 441 square feet — about the size of some NYC apartments — and had fireplaces, suggesting people may have lived in them throughout the winter.

Walls made of earth, ditches, and fences made of wooden stakes surrounded the houses that were built into the ground. These protections may have been an attempt to dissuade other groups from raiding the settlement, according to the authors.

"The discovery challenges stereotypes of such societies as simple and mobile, revealing their ability to create sophisticated structures," Schreiber told Newsweek.

The fortifications may not have always been effective, as there's evidence that the settlement was repeatedly burned.

Researchers believe the fires may have been deliberately set as an act of violence. "The environment of western Siberia now seems to us rather harsh and unfriendly, but for hunter-gatherers and fishers it was a real paradise," Ekaterina Dubovtseva, a co-author of the study, told Archaeology magazine.

• Business Insider via MSN.com; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Great Fire

Picture taken on Nov. 29, 2008 shows Tibetan Buddhist monks try to put out a fire during a drill at Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery (monastery or vihara) in Xigaze, southwest China's Tibetan Autonomous Region (Xinhua News Agency/China-Hiking.com).

Rebuilding Burned Buddhist Temple

Diane Smith (Star-Telegram.com)

FORT WORTH, Texas — Wat Lao Thepnimith looks like a postcard from Southeast Asia planted in a suburban patch of houses nestled in northwest Fort Worth. The Buddhist campus is the heart of a Lao-American Buddhist community that began resettling in North Texas in the mid-1970s.

• VIDEO Laotian Buddhist Temple fire

Many of the estimated 11,000 members are refugees of Communism, who fled after the Vietnam War — a conflict in which many Lao were allies of the United States. On Aug. 24, a fire destroyed the campus temple, the Sim Building.

Rebuilding is the only option for a structure described as a labor of love. "We are really so, so sad," monk Ven. Kommana Vongphakdy said. Strangers touched by the story have brought donations. The community is working with Fort Worth to line up blueprints and permits. More>>

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