Derryvree’s Bogbean and Milfoil
Archived: 4 October 2026
30,269 BCE cannot identify a discrete Irish event, but falls within Marine Isotope Stage 3, before maximum expansion of the British-Irish Ice Sheet. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between glacial tills, dated broadly to 34,950–29,750 BCE, indicating treeless periglacial wetlands with bogbean, milfoil, mosses, insects and tundra vegetation. Later ice sealed this local archive. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, yielded reindeer, mammoth, giant deer and hyaena remains, showing varied cold-stage fauna. A cut-marked reindeer femur may indicate Upper Palaeolithic butchery, but proves neither settlement nor continuous occupation. Evidence depicts a changing, fragmented landscape, requiring caution about human presence at all.