A farmer in Co Westmeath has said he thought 4,000-year-old Early Bronze Age axeheads found in his field were old horse ploughs, or scrap.
Thomas Dunne said the discovery was made after a piece of machinery fell off during silage cutting on his field in Coralstown.
The National Museum of Ireland issued an appeal earlier this month, after the axeheads were sent anonymously to the museum at the end of June.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Philip Boucher Hayes, Mr Dunne said: "We were cutting silage in a field when I felt a piece of steel come off the mower.
"We were afraid it would go into something else, so we got a man with metal detector to go and look for it.
"He found these under a row of beech trees. "We thought they were just bits of old horse ploughs or scrap. We could have thrown them back into the ditch the very same!"
The person, who had assisted Mr Dunne with the metal detector, thought the pieces were unusual, and decided to send them to the museum, Mr Dunne said.
It wasn't until he saw a report on RTÉ News, and the appeal for information by the museum, that he realised the now famous axeheads had been found on his property.
"I couldn't believe that they came out of my field," he said.
Mr Dunne explained that he has been cutting silage on this same field for over 30 years, but nothing had come to his attention before this discovery.
"It's just an ordinary, green field. There are no monuments or anything else around it."
He doesn't believe there to be any other objects of note under his field and said he will not be partaking in any further excavations.
"All I see under it is water!" he said.
"They are lovely big beech trees down here and I will never go near them."
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