Derryvree’s Full-Glacial Waters
Archived: 18 September 2026
Labelled 31,333 BCE, this period in Ireland can only be placed broadly within Late Pleistocene Marine Isotope Stage 3. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater silts between glacial tills, dated broadly to 36,900–31,700 calibrated years BP. They indicate locally ice-free, periglacial wetlands with mosses, sedges, aquatic plants, dwarf willow and open tundra, not woodland. Cave assemblages, especially Castlepook in Cork, document varied cold-stage fauna, including reindeer, mammoth, predators and scavengers, though not as a single contemporary community. A possibly butchered reindeer bone suggests Ireland’s earliest human activity, but proves neither settlement nor society. Environmental instability preceded expanding ice-sheet cover across Ireland.