Hollymount’s Buried Marsh
Archived: 24 September 2026
Thirty thousand seven hundred and seventy-one BCE denotes an imprecise point within Ireland’s unstable Late Pleistocene, not a recorded event. Evidence from Derryvree, Hollymount and Greenagho in Fermanagh shows freshwater marshes and open, periglacial vegetation briefly developed between glacial advances. Waterford cave finds indicate deer in southern Ireland, while Castlepook Cave, Cork, preserves mixed remains of mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, bear, hyaena and other fauna accumulated over long periods. These records demonstrate changing cold landscapes and intermittent continental faunal connections. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate human activity, but cannot prove settlement. Subsequent ice-sheet expansion buried or destroyed evidence.