Rathdown – 4,500 years ago

The very first visitors to Greystones,

4,500 years ago didn’t stay where the town is today,

but instead they settled at Rathdown, just to the north.

This was when the Stone Age people came.

In 1992, part of the cliff at Rathdown collapsed into the sea.

Newspaper reports at the time say that

Neolithic flints were among the finds.

The Neolithic era is sometimes called the New Stone Age.

 

1. The Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age came first.

It lasted from 2,700 million years ago

to around 10,000 years ago.

During this time men were hunter gatherers.

Tools were mostly made of stone

but also of wood, bone and leather.

 

2.During the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age

smaller stone tools such as arrow or spear heads were made .

The first boats were made

so men could now fish as well as hunt.

Man’s best friend the dog was tamed during this time.

 

3.During the Neolithic or New Stone Age

man started to farm the land.

Can you imagine the early farmers

working on the land at Rathdown?

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This is a flint that a student found in the school playground.

The Stone Age – and its links with Greystones.

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Let’s start at the very beginning …

The Stone Age was the time when stone

was used to make tools and weapons.

The Stone Age lasted  approximately 3.4 million years.

The Stone Age ended about 2,000 years BC.

The Stone Age ended when people learned

to use metals like bronze and then iron.

In 1992, part of the cliff at Rathdown fell into the sea.

Among the rocks and stones were found artifacts like flints.

These artifacts showed that people had lived at

Rathdown from Stone Age times.

Click on this link from Encyclopedia Britannica Kids

on Scoilnet to see what an artifact is.

Click on this link to see a newspaper article from the

Bray People in 1992 reporting the find.

The flint at the top of this post was found

in our school yard in 2006.

Read about how it was discovered here.