I found this article of interest but not very satisfying. It suggests that the 'small rounded stones' found at many ancient sites in Ireland and further afield were 'ball bearings'. This would not be the case for the stones found in Sligo, probably the oldest stones of this type. I would have a very different perspective. I offer the following:
Ancient Irish Sacred Stones
It is not unusual to find manufactured items, hand-made objects, artefacts in ancient sites. The items manufactured by the people who built the ancient sites in Western Europe are many and varied and show, in miniature and in full size, a selection of their tools and other items of ornament. These include axe-heads, hammer or mace-heads, arrow-heads, cutters, scrapers, needles and beads. Those that are full-sized are usually polished and not for general use but are objects of ritual.
The others seem to have been for bodily decorations, for clothing enhancement, but also may have been symbols of office for those craft and gifted people in the community that made them, the magicians or Druids in the tribe. Druid derives from the Irish ‘Driocht’, meaning magic but in early times the Druids were the wise people, the shamans and healers of their community.
One particular type of item, has not been explained is called, by local archaeologists, a baetyl, meaning, for them, ‘a small stone’. It is clear that they are not just river-rolled stones but manufactured items perfectly rounded or spherical and, in Sligo, in the North-West of Ireland, about three centimetres in diameter. They were purpose made and finished with great accuracy and precision and not some roughed-out item or freak of nature. How could we ever know, at this remove, five thousand years later, what that purpose was?
The very general description of ‘rounded stones’ tells us nothing about its use or purpose. ‘Hard science’ has nothing to offer so far. The small stones found in Sligo, mainly at Carrowmore, are about three centimetres in diameter. As we move east through Carrowkeel, Carnbane or ‘Sli na gCaillig’ the Hill of the Wise Women, and on to the Boyne valley, the stones get larger and more oval in shape. The design development of these objects, as we move from west to east, from Sligo to Scotland, and at other sites where they have been found, changed so much that, in many cases they are not obviously associated with the small baetyls of Sligo.
The Newgrange edition is about the size and shape of a rugby ball. It has been suggested by some archaeologists that these were the stones used to grind out the ‘basins’ found at Dún Aongas, The Stronghold of the One Son, Newgrange, and The Place of Light, Knowth, but the polished symmetry of the items do not give much credence to this idea. Work tools would not have this precision of finish. The work of grinding out such basins would give the grinding stones a variation dependant on the stones being ground, the stones being used as grind-stones and the idiosyncrasy or eccentricity of the worker. Very little has been published or made readily available about these stones even though they are found at many sites in Ireland and abroad. This makes further research difficult unless direct access can be obtained to the hoard of baetyls in storage.
However, the dictionary meaning of the word bae•tyl, a noun of great antiquity, is given as ‘a meteorite or stone held sacred or believed to be of divine origin’. The word derives from the Latin: baetulus, and Greek: baítȳlos, the word for a meteoritic stone. Meteorites are usually of high iron content and, maybe for this reason, the ‘Irish’ stones have not been recognised as meteoritic, as far as I can tell, by archaeologist in Ireland, either local or national.
It is very unlikely that the ancient Irish, perfectly rounded stones are meteors that have reached the ground. Their composition virtually precludes this. However there is an old Irish saying that suggests that ‘shooting stars’ are the souls of people coming to Earth or going to heaven. I have heard this many times, particularly when I was a child, and this is the only ‘sacred’ connection that I had for meteorites. There is, however, a story about Newgrange that says that the soul in the ashes put in the basins stones goes back to the sun on the beam of light that reaches it at Winter solstice. I like that story.
The idea of the stone being sacred is intriguing and does open the discussion for anthropologists like me. There are many such stones in Ireland and abroad. Probably the best known is the black stone on display at Mecca, a meteoritic stone held sacred to Muslims. The Black Stone of Kaaba at Mecca in Arabic is called Al-hajar Al-aswad. The word Kaaba means Cube. Muslim tradition brings the stone back to the time of the creation of Adam and Eve.
But where else can we go for narrative that tells us more about these rounded or oval, egg-shaped or spherical stones found along with the remains of people. One possible explanation is found in the Chinese and Native American traditions. Many visitors to the site at Carrowmore suggested them for consideration. They told me that the stone would have been used in the eventual cremation ceremony of the gifted people in their communities. It would have been awarded to the person while at the pinnacle of their career and kept in a small bag around their neck and worn for the rest of their life while their skill and personal vitality was in decline. This energy of skill and vitality defined the soul of the individual. The stone would have become the final haven for the soul of that person when the body declined into frail old age. After death the body was left out on a crag or stone out-crop or carn for the creatures of the wild to de-flesh it. When fully de-fleshed the bones were taken back to the ritual site and burned in a bon- or bone-fire.
Later, the stone would have been worn by a young woman, in her pouch or on a string around her neck, or else, if it were a larger baetyl, it would be kept near her sleeping place. As the young woman became fertile and pregnant, and the foetus began to grow, the soul would then transfer to the new body and be reborn at full term. This was their way of retaining their gifted people, their craft workers, healers and shamans, in their community. Perhaps this was also the case with our stone-age people in Ireland and elsewhere.
Dr Michael Roberts
Cultural Anthropologist
Sligo
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