setting sun casts a cosmic lightshow

Jonathan Jones continues his visual history of British art with a look at a superbly constructed burial chamber, built in 2,800 BC, through which the setting sun casts a cosmic lightshow

Five thousand years ago, Orkney was a flourishing place whose inhabitants built fine stone houses in the settlement of Skara Brae. The green mound of Maeshowe stands nearby and must be where they communed with ancestors. Stoop to enter its long tunnel and you come to a dome-like chamber superbly constructed in about 2,800 BC with stone lintels. At the winter solstice, the setting sun shines directly down the tunnel and pierces the inner chamber to create a cosmic lightshow