People of the Green Mounds

We raced to the top of the hill – to be the first to stand on top of the fairy mounds.

They say that if you listen carefully on a calm summer’s evening you can hear the fairy music playing.

They also say that should you fall asleep on the mounds the fairly folk will steal you away and you will never be able to return to your own world.

But we know it’s a tumulus – one of the many Iron Age burial mounds that line the hills in this region; the last resting place of someone who once lived and roamed this land – but is now forgotten.

Yet they were deemed worthy of a memorial to last millennia. And I can’t help wondering who they were.

This is what fascinates me about lost civilisations – a handful of artefacts and the rest is guesswork. And for a civilisation like that of the ancient Celts who had no writing but an oral tradition instead – when they were gone their words were lost.

What other civilisations have come and gone without our knowing?