Dr Noel McCarthy

speaker

129 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 7 Aug

Dr Noel McCarthy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan · Neolithic Tombs In Galway · 7 Aug 2026 podcast

Um largely the the idea would be that you use a series of of levers and um manpower.

You you may have had oxen or large animals to help pull it.

Now, the interesting thing about this is w we're trying to figure out, I don't think we'll ever be absolutely sure, but where did that piece of limestone come from?

Um, I would love if it came from the actual pit that we were excavating.

Um the the visual striking appeal and the you know the sort of the impression you would get if it was raised up out of a meter deep pit in the ground and then placed on some upright orthostat stones um to hold it you know almost in position above the pit from which it which it came, um would be really striking.

And imagine the the sort of um the statement it's making to

people who come and visit the site um and see that the local people have raised this stone vertically up from a deep pit and then positioned it right above that to take their offerings and their

the the bones of their ancestors underneath.

the moving of the stone itself would have been very, very gradual, like I said, using series of levers and that.

But moving the stone itself, if it didn't come out of that pit, might not have been too difficult, even though it was approximately fourteen tons.

the area surrounding th the uh position that it's in now is actually sheet bedrock, it's karst.

So if you got the this big stone onto that bedrock surface

it would move quite easily on a series of rollers and that kind of of of material, particularly if you had a couple of animals to push or pull it.

So although it's very, very impressive to us, and it really, really is, um, it may be that people who are used to working in stone

And building such monuments.

You know, it was not easy to them.

The purpose of it was this large stone.

So that when somebody else who understood the concept of stone building and megalithic tomb building came along, they would look at this capstone and go, Wow.

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