Derryvree’s Two-Till Archive
Archived: 18 September 2026
31,255 BCE is a chronological label, not a datable event. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between two glacial tills, radiocarbon-dated broadly to a period encompassing this date. Its pollen, plants, mosses and insects indicate cold, treeless tundra wetlands with pools, seasonal productivity and severe periglacial conditions. Castlepook Cave in County Cork records MIS 3 fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, hyena and Arctic species, although its deposits are mixed. A marked reindeer bone may signal early human butchery, but cannot prove settlement. Ireland's history here is reconstructed from fragmentary environmental evidence amid changing ice, uncertain routes and no polities.