Pork in Ireland  Pork in Ireland has been a key part of the Irish diet since prehistory. Ireland's flora and fauna overwhelmingly arrived via a Neolithic land bridge from Great Britain prior to its submerging around 12,000 BP. When the very first hunter-gatherers arrived around 2,000 years later, the local ecosystem largely resembled that of modern Ireland. Dating back to Neolithic times, large amounts of pig bones have been found near habitations. There is evidence of wild boar consumption dating as early as 9000 BP, at a Mesolithic site in, about 1,000 years before farming began in Ireland. Evidence of Stone Age farming survives in the Céide Fields in north County Mayo. Discovered in the 1930s, they are the world's oldest known extant field system and among the world's most extensive Stone Age ruins. Excavations of animal bones at the Newgrange site in County Meath in the 1960s confirmed that cattle and pigs were the primary food animals circa 4000 BP, with pig bones the more dominant of the two. Pink and black in colour, "long-snouted, thin-spare, muscular, and active" the breed of pigs most commonplace in ancient Ireland were called greyhound pigs; woodland animals, they foraged on fallen acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts and other natural foodstuffs abundantly available in a landscape almost entirely under forest. This breed remained the basis for virtually all Irish pig farming until supplanted by new breeds in the 20th century. The Irish word for pig "muc" is closely linked with the Welsh equivalent "mochyn" and, further afield, the swine god worshipped by the ancient Continental Gauls "Moccus". The wild boar has a significant place in Celtic iconography and Celtic myths, a telling example being the story of Diarmait and the "Boar of Benn Gulbain". The role of pig-keepers ("muccaid") in tales like "The Contention of the Two Swineherds," and "the Finding of the Rock of Cashel" suggest a degree of importance. Stories like "The Story of Mac Dá Thó's Pig," "Bricriu's Feast" and "The Adventure of Cormac Grandson of Con" seem to indicate likewise associations both with warrior-culture and hidden knowledge, though how much this reflected actual practice is debatable. Pork, perhaps because it was so freely and widely available, was a mainstay of consumption in ancient Ireland.