English Audio Request

The Giant’s Causeway
Part I
The Giant’s Causeway is a place of breathtaking beauty, one of the greatest
wonders of the world, covered in mystery. It’s located in the County of Antrim in
Northern Ireland, in the north-eastern part of Ireland.
Its beauty was opened to people by the Bishop of Londonderry, who visited the
north of Ireland in 1692 and discovered the causeway. Later he spoke about it in
Dublin and London and in 1694, a debate started on how it was formed. Theories
ranged from man-made to natural formation, but scientists were puzzled by the
amazing symmetry of thousands of columns. The mechanism of their formation
was not clear until 1771 when a Frenchman explained that it was the result of
volcanic activity. The columns that make up the causeway were formed about
60 million years ago by cooling lava.
While the Bishop brought knowledge of the causeway to a wider world, the
first people who probably saw it were hunters and gatherers who settled in the
area after the last ice age (10,000 years ago). It is believed that they travelled
around the densely forested north coast by boats and saw the causeway on their
travels. Perhaps they created a lot of myths and legends about this area. This is
one of them.