The Incised Castlepook Femur
Archived: 21 September 2026
About 30,935 BCE, Ireland lay within the climatically unstable MIS 3 of the Late Pleistocene, not a precisely datable historical year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between glacial tills, indicating treeless tundra wetlands with sedges, mosses, aquatic plants and cold-adapted fauna. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, yielded reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, predators and other cold-stage animals, showing links with north-west Europe. An incised reindeer femur may indicate human butchery, but lacks associated tools, hearths or settlement evidence. No Irish communities, political structures or material culture are securely known. Advancing ice increasingly shaped this fragmentary landscape during the ensuing glacial expansion.