The Aran Islands

are situated thirty miles from Galway City and 7 nautical miles for the Connemara coastline, and are easily accessed by boat from Rossaveal and Doolin and from Inverin by air.

The islands are made up of carboniferous lime stone - and would have been the seabed south of the equator some 350 million years ago, evidence of this can still be seen today in the form of fossilized shellfish, seaweeds, fish and birch pods.

Another main feature of the islands is the millions of granite boulders which dot the landscape, mullan eibher in Irish. This granite is from the Connemara Mountains , which in the dawn of time were 2 to 3 times higher, but as a result of glacial movement they were left behind when the ice sheets receded.

There is a local explanation; that once there lived 2 giants, one in the north and one in the south. Now, both giants despised one another and occasionally threw boulders at each other and that s how they got here,

But Aran wasn't always an island; we were once connected to the mainland, to the Burren in Co. Clare and Golam Head in Connemara . Local tradition tells of the islands splitting on a St. Patrick s Day. Indeed they will split again, at the Gleann Mór near Cill Rónáin and at the Súnda Caoch near Dún Aengus. Galway Bay was once a large inshore lake whose name survives to this day, and was known as Loch Lurgan. Indeed, evidence of this emerged some years ago in the form of a dug out canoe and some 5,000 years ago the area was also covered in ancient Irish forest, evidence also comes to light of this on beaches after winter storms along the Connemara shoreline.

Inis Mór get it's name from the old Irish word for a kidney “Ara” this Ara Na Naomh, the kidney of the Saints, and may be a metaphor, a kidney cleanses the body of impurities, it may have been thought to clean the early monastic settlers of sin and human impurities.
The first settlements where late stone age farmers settling the coastline of Connemara and building small farmsteads, identical to the stone walls which crios cross the landscape of Inis Mór a wonderful example of this can be seen in the Céide Fields in north Mayo.
When the Inis Mór split from the from the mainland, many of the remaining forests quickly disappeared as there were no other fuel sources, the felling of the timber also contributed to massive soil erosion.
With the influx of new tribes from Spain , Germany and England , Ireland became a more unsettled environment and this began the building of the many massive ring forts, for protection from invaders. Forts such as Dún Aongus, The Black Fort and in Dún Beag date from this period, some 4000 years ago.