Derryvree’s Periglacial Poolscape
Archived: 20 September 2026
Around 31,013 BCE, Ireland’s condition cannot be reconstructed year by year, but evidence indicates a cold, unstable Late Pleistocene landscape. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments beneath till, showing ice-free wetlands with sedges, grasses, mosses and sparse tundra vegetation during a broad interval. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, yielded varied fauna, including reindeer, mammoth and hyaena, though its deposits are time-averaged and disturbed. A marked reindeer femur may indicate butchery by humans, but proves neither settlement nor continuous occupation. Later ice expansion reshaped and erased evidence. Thus environmental change, rather than political or cultural history, dominates this currently available fragmentary record.