Derryvree’s Intertill Wetland
Archived: 21 September 2026
Thirty thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine BCE is not a recoverable Irish historical year, but falls within a broad Late Pleistocene calibrated range represented at Derryvree, County Fermanagh. There, freshwater organic sediments between glacial tills record an ice-free, treeless periglacial wetland of pools, sedges, mosses, herbs and cold-adapted insects. The site indicates local environmental change, not island-wide conditions. Ireland approached greater glaciation amid shifting ice, sea levels and possible connections with Britain. Castlepook Cave fauna document Pleistocene mammals; a possibly tool-marked reindeer bone suggests, but does not establish, human presence. No evidence supports permanent settlement, society or agriculture at all.