Colhoun’s Buried Freshwater
Archived: 5 October 2026
About 30,242 BCE, Ireland lay within a fluctuating Pleistocene cold landscape, rather than a precisely datable historical moment. Freshwater sediments at Derryvree, County Fermanagh, deposited between glacial advances, show locally ice-free wetland supporting treeless tundra plants, including sedges, mosses, bogbean and mountain avens. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves evidence of diverse mammals, including reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, predators and smaller cold-adapted species, demonstrating intermittent connections with wider Eurasia. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests rare human visits, but no secure settlements or other human remains exist. Later glaciation repeatedly reshaped landscapes, obscuring this fragile environmental record over subsequent cold millennia.