Celtic Shelf Horizons
Ireland at this point lay in the Pleistocene, long before farming, monuments, metalworking, written language or the political communities familiar from later history. Archaeologists and Quaternary scientists commonly use Midlandian for the last cold stage in Ireland, broadly corresponding to the Devensian of Britain and parts of Marine Isotope Stages 4–2. Around 33.8 thousand calibrated years BP, the climate was cold, but the final and most extensive phase of the last Irish Ice Sheet had not yet overwhelmed all parts of the island.