Dryas Beneath the Drumlin
Archived: 21 September 2026
Thirty millennia before the present, Ireland lay within the changing, pre-maximum landscape of the last Ice Age, rather than a uniformly frozen island. At Derryvree, Fermanagh, organic sediments between tills record a periglacial freshwater wetland with tundra vegetation, insects and shallow water, later overridden by ice. Other northern deposits indicate exposed ground. Southern cave assemblages attest to cold-adapted mammals, although cave contexts and older dates require caution. Waterford red deer date broadly to this horizon. A cut-marked Castlepook reindeer bone suggests possible human handling, but no occupation is established. Evidence remains fragmentary, precluding conclusions about settlement, society, routes or populations.