Nestled in the countryside of County Down, sits the Legananny Dolmen. The name Legananny is derived from the Irish term Liagán Áine, meaning standing stone. This is a Neolithic era funerary site dating back around 5,000 years. To honor a relative that had passed away, these huge stones were dragged up the hillside and assembled into a lasting gravestone. The dolmen stands about 1.8 meters high and is about 3 meters long.

I have thought often about how relative the term “old” is. Being from the comparatively new country of the U.S., and then adding to that being from out west, my reference for what is considered old is very different from others. There are those who live in a place that can boast of seeing the beginning of civilization, the start of human innovation and discovery, and can trace their history back thousands and thousands of years….while my part of the country can look back to it’s beginning and celebrate our one hundred or two hundred year mark. So for someone like me to then go and face a structure that has been standing for around 5,000 years is mind boggling. But it’s one of the things that I love about seeing other parts of the world is the change in perspective that it gives.