Prehistory in Ireland, from the archaeological evidence thus far discovered, begins around the 8th-7th millennia BC, a few centuries after the last great Ice Age, when Mesolithic hunter-gatherers arrived on the ancient shores of this island. Our earliest known evidence of human activity in Ireland is from around 8,000 BC, where archaeologists discovered shell middens along the coast of County Antrim. Shortly before 4,000 BC, farming was introduced into Ireland and this move from the Mesolithic hunter gatherer culture to a Neolithic farming society, was the single greatest social revolution...

County Laois is one of the richest counties in Ireland for antiquities and has been bestowed with a rich tapestry of history that spans over four millennia. Laois began as being part of the Kingdom of Osraighe, to the Lordship of Leix, and from the creation of Queen's County, to finally returning to its ancient name of County Laois after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The earliest and only written records of pre-Christian County Laois come from the Greek historian, Ptolemy, whose map of Ireland of c.100 A.D., shows a castle or fortress at Dunamase, close to a river called the...