Chapter 1: What is the Geopark and its significance?
So the Geopark is a big idea and a big area, from Kylemore Abbey in the west to Ballinrobe Mart in the east. It takes in the three Great Lakes, Carra, Mask and Corrib, the Mam Turks, the Mam Trasnas, the Partree Mountains and Connemara National Park. And the big idea is the people, the culture, the language, the farming, the nature and the enterprises that all spring from the geology.
So my first stop was to go underground with a geologist, Benjamin Thebedo, into the pigeonhole cave outside and underneath the village of Cong.
So this game is called Pigeonhole. Polna Gollum, some people said, not from here specifically, but the Gollum character in the Lord of the Rings might be inspired by the Irish for pigeon, Gollum, with the Uru Gollum. Because we know that Tolkien took other things from this landscape, didn't he?
Chapter 2: How extensive is the cave network in Cong?
Yes, exactly.
And from the language, being a linguist. I think it was more attached to the actual Byrne landscape in County Clare than here. But that being said, it's a nice kind of reminder, just the alliteration, the polna golem. How extensive is the cave network?
Chapter 3: What are the implications of underground water flow?
The cave network is very extensive. However, it's through a lot of small cracks, so they're not easy to explore. There's a team from Bristol University, a speleological team, that has come over the year exploring the cave and trying to link up between the swallow holes on the southeast shore of Loch Mask to the springs around the Kong village. But they haven't been able to.
It's just too narrow for the widest part.
It's a valuable lesson, isn't it, Benjamin, that whatever we do to water in one place can end up having consequences we know not where. Because for all of our science and for all of our technological advances, we're still not able to map with 100% confidence, are we, what happens to water once it goes underground?
It's still unknown.
Chapter 4: How does the geology of the landscape shape agriculture?
And that's very important for anybody farming in particular on karst landscape. Because you have to make sure there's not an input where you are. Even if you're further away from a river or a stream, you might have actually a swallow hole in your land that you're not familiar with. There's a bit of a... A light shining back here. This is manganese mineralization coming down from rainwater.
That's really interesting. And the further you go in, the more the roof starts to sparkle. Yes.
The last thing I'm going to try and show you is there's a very nice fossil. So it's a colonial coral, not the most common that we have, which is why it's interesting to see it like that.
Chapter 5: What is the connection between geology and local culture?
Just reminding you that these rocks are originally marine sediments deposited in shallow tropical waters.
Shallow tropical waters.
Yes. How long ago? 350 million years ago, roughly, in the Carboniferous era, when Ireland was essentially around the equator. Pangea. Just before the formation of Pangaea, there was still a bit coming in, being added on a bit later, yes.
Hundreds of millions of years before there were even dinosaurs. Yes, absolutely. This existed and formed in this rock that has ended up here.
Yeah, but it existed at the bottom of the sea and eventually died and was mixed up with the sediment that became this rock, yes.
How does knowing the age of that little bit of rock here, about 50 feet underneath Kong, shape your idea of the landscape above?
I don't think it does change it that much. I mean, you could switch the number and it would still be impressive. You know, for most people on an everyday basis, you'd just be... 100 million, 150 million. It's older than the dinosaurs and all of that.
It does wreck with your head, though, a little bit, because most of us are really only capable of thinking about this landscape since the glaciers retreated in the course of 10,000, 13,000 years as being how Ireland was shaped and formed But you just come down those 60 or 70 steps into this cave and you think, oh, good Lord, no.
To understand what shaped and formed this country requires a whole different attitude to time.
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Chapter 6: How does the landscape influence human identity and activity?
And it's an abstraction. I personally believe no human beings can ever comprehend that. We're just not made for that. However, the human species and others at the surface, that's a different story.
How does rock formation shape human activity and the people and the culture of this place?
that's a more universal response in the sense that they shape activity and culture everywhere the bedrock influences the soil here we're in limestone bedrock a few kilometers west we switch to much older rocks that are
either other types of sedimentary rock sandstone conglomerates or metamorphic rock quartzite schist and a bit further down marble in turn especially when it comes to agriculture you know it doesn't allow you to produce the same thing or as easily anyway
So you will find cattle in an area like this, and you won't find cattle 10, 15 kilometres north of here.
They would have to do a lot of work on the field, like in that film we talked about, the field before. They would have had to...
improve the soil by spreading lime and you'd see a plethora of lime kiln throughout the landscape over there and each and every single one of those activities creates its own set of stories and experiences which informs culture so in a very real sense then
this stuff beneath us does shape who we are yeah i mean you know we are our landscape too we are what we eat and if wherever our our food comes from is what makes us too the water we drink that contains you know minerals linked with the local bedrock that comes into us as i say the animals if they're farmed locally they will eat the local grass the local grass carries again a signature of the local bedrock so we are we are our landscapes
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