Irish Recorded Oldest Known Eclipse 5,355 Years Ago
Our ancient Irish ancestors carved images of an ancient eclipse into giant stones over 5,000 years ago, on November 30, 3340 BC to be exact. This is the oldest known recorded solar eclipse in history. The illustrations are found on the Stone Age "Cairn L," on Carbane West, at Loughcrew, outside Oldcastle, in County Meath. The landscape of rolling hills is littered with Neolithic monuments. Some say that originally there were at least 40 to 50 monuments, but others say the figure was more like 100. Read more
The Office of Public Works will have staff in attendance at Cairn T, Loughcrew on the mornings of Saturday the 20th of March, Sunday the 21st March and Monday the 22nd March from 6.15am until 7.30am. Admission to the Chamber of Cairn T for the Equinox Illumination of the chamber is free of charge. Read more
Irish archaeoastronomer Paul Griffin has announced the confirmation of the world's oldest known solar eclipse recorded in stone, substantially older than the recordings made in 2800 BC by Chinese astronomers. This finding was made at the world's oldest lunar eclipse tracking multi cairn site at the Loughcrew Cairn L Megalithic Monument in Ireland, and corresponds to a solar eclipse which occurred on November 30, 3340 BC, calculated with The Digital Universe astronomy software.
The possibility of an eclipse was first discovered in 1999 by Mr. Griffin and posted to his web site in 2000. Subsequent improvements in astronomical software has indicated that this eclipse obscured nearly 100% of the solar disc and was visible in the late afternoon just before sunset. The Irish Neolithics used a 4044.5 day lunar eclipse cycle which is broken up into 365 days x 11 years + 29.5 days (synodic lunar month). This is also similar to a Tritos/Nova Lunation combination of one Tritos cycle of 3986.63 days and two nova lunations of 29.53 days each, yielding a total of 4045.69 days. The Irish Neolithic astronomer priests at this site recorded events on 3 stones relating to the eclipse as seen from that location. This is the only eclipse that fits these petroglyphs out of 92 solar eclipses tracked by the discoverer.