Permanent Gallery: The Distant Past: Pre-historic Mid-Antrim

This exhibition looks at the relationship between Early Man and his environment. As humans developed their available range of tools and skills, so they increasingly left their mark on the landscape in the form of haunting stone and earth monuments.

There is evidence of people having lived in Mid-Antrim for around 9000 years. Traces of a Middle Stone Age settlement were found along the Bann Valley. By the New Stone Age, people were becoming more settled, and built impressive stone tombs (megaliths) for communal burials, such as one at Ticloy, near Broughshane. Metal working was introduced 4500 years ago, and bronze axe heads have been found.