Fermanagh’s Mountain-Avens Bed
Archived: 18 September 2026
31,297 BCE denotes a broad Late Pleistocene horizon, not a recoverable Irish calendar year. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, organic sediments between glacial tills indicate an ice-free interlude around 33,500 cal BP, with cold, wet, treeless tundra, pools and mountain avens. Crag Cave records intermittent liquid-water conditions, while Castlepook Cave preserves mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, predators and other open-country fauna. A marked reindeer femur may indicate human handling, but disturbed context prevents proof of settlement. Any visitors were probably mobile hunter-gatherers. Later ice-sheet expansion erased evidence, leaving fragmentary records of varied environments and only tentative evidence for early people in Ireland.