Castlepook’s Reindeer Groove
Archived: 18 September 2026
Around 31,347 BCE, Ireland lay within a cold, regionally varied Late Pleistocene landscape between ice advances. Derryvree in Fermanagh preserves freshwater sediments showing tundra-like wetlands with sedges, mosses, herbs and productive summers, rather than permanent ice cover. Castlepook Cave in Cork yielded reindeer, mammoth, giant deer and other cold-adapted fauna, although its disturbed collections cannot represent one moment. A grooved reindeer femur may record stone-tool butchery by an Upper Palaeolithic visitor, but does not prove settlement. Subsequent ice-sheet expansion erased or buried much early evidence, leaving a cautious environmental and palaeontological reconstruction rather than a recorded national history for Ireland.