Derryvree’s Threeleaf Waters
Archived: 7 October 2026
Around 30,164 BCE, Ireland lay within the unstable Late Pleistocene, not a historically datable year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between glacial tills, indicating an ice-free interval with cold, treeless wetland, pools, sedges, mosses and tundra plants. Its radiocarbon evidence spans a broad calibrated range, preventing precise national conclusions. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, contains a chronologically mixed Ice Age fauna, including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, predators and lemmings, demonstrating changing open-country ecosystems. A cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate transient Upper Palaeolithic human activity, but not permanent settlement. Advancing ice later reshaped landscapes and obscured substantial evidence from earlier deposits.