Castlepook’s Open Tundra
Archived: 10 September 2026
31,852 BCE is a modern chronological label rather than a recoverable Irish historical year. During volatile MIS 3, Ireland was intermittently ice-free, with open periglacial tundra, freshwater hollows, sparse vegetation and changing climates before later ice-sheet expansion reworked much evidence. Deposits at Derryvree, Greenagho and Hollymount, alongside Kerry speleothems, indicate non-glacial episodes but cannot define conditions everywhere. Cave faunas, notably at Castlepook, include reindeer, mammoth, bear, hare, fox and hyaena, demonstrating ecological links with north-west Europe. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests human activity around 33,000 years ago but proves neither settlement nor culture. The record is fragmentary and environmental.