Menyanthes Under Drumlin Clay
Archived: 26 September 2026
30,659 BCE is a modern label within Marine Isotope Stage 3, not a recoverable Irish year. Evidence from Derryvree, County Fermanagh, records a freshwater wetland between glacial advances, later sealed beneath drumlin till. Its sediments, dated broadly to 36,900–31,700 calibrated years before present, contain bogbean, sedges, mosses and other plants indicating cold, treeless periglacial conditions. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves bones of mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, bear, hyaena and later cold-adapted fauna, demonstrating changing open environments and movement routes. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate transient human activity, but cannot securely establish settlement, chronology or social life with certainty.