CURIOSITIES:WITH A HORIZON dominated by towering cranes and the word "regeneration" regularly bandied about, it's easy to forget that Dublin has been a place of settlement for many millennia.
Colonisation came late to our physically isolated island, with more intrepid European settlers first appearing here around 8,000 BC - during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age. The hunter-gatherers who passed through Dublin some 7,000 years ago eventually settled in the region, erecting enduring stone monuments to commemorate their existence.
Early evidence of their tenure has been uncovered in burial cairns found throughout the county and ancient traces of our predecessors can be found in the most unlikely places.
Visitors to Dublin Zoo, particularly those with an interest in the tapirs and Patagonian maras, may have occasionally wondered about the origins of the clearly man-made stone structure barely visible at the back of the enclosure, which is partly obscured by an overhanging tree.
Too symmetrical to be merely rubble from the zoo's latest building project, yet too clumsy for an attempt at modern art, it is in fact a megalithic kist tomb, which was relocated here from nearby Chapelizod, where extensive evidence of the earliest settlers has been uncovered.
This kist, from the ancient word for chest or coffin, is a classic example of a prehistoric burial chamber. The entire structure stands about 1.3m tall. Parallel upright wall stones support a large flat slab, forming a table-like structure that is positioned over a thin stone floor. The tiny chamber formed by these stones contained either cremated or intact bodily remains. Occasionally, ornaments have been found within a kist under excavation, possibly indicating a person of wealth. Kist tombs are often found in clusters beneath barrows and cairns, as may well have been the case with this one.
Surprisingly little attention is drawn to this curiosity in the zoo and few visitors are aware of this remnant of pre-history standing right under their noses. For the moment, it serves as a handy scratching post for the tapirs (right) and a rainy-day shelter for the little maras - all blissfully ignorant of the ancient origins of the monument in their midst.