The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange

by David Wagner for CE 4803 Engineering Practice as taught by Dr. Shih

Over 5000 years ago, before even the Great Pyramid of Giza was erected, hundreds of workers toiled for decades to erect a great mound of stone and turf and face it with sparkling quartz. Not content merely to shift tons of material into a rude pile, they precisely aligned the stones in a roofbox so the winter solstice sunrise penetrates deep inside for seventeen minutes.

Although this great erection stood for 'only' a millennium before being lost to mound slippage, its solar alignment has remained to the present, and even the corbelled roof has stayed intact and waterproof for over five thousand years. The mound was rediscovered in the seventeenth century, but not excavated and restored until later in the twentieth century.

This edifice is an enduring artifact of stone-age civilization, a literally monumental work of civil engineering. I propose to describe the monolithic stone construction process used to build this mound with a particle system model. Failing that, I propose to describe the design and construction of this structure verbally, emphasizing how its builders achieved unparalleled service life using local materials.

— David Wagner 2007/01/22 16:38