Castlepook’s Uncertain Blade
Archived: 17 September 2026
31,396 BCE is not a recoverable Irish historical year but falls within an unstable Late Pleistocene interval. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater silts between glacial tills, indicating a locally ice-free, treeless wetland with tundra vegetation during part of MIS 3. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, contains a mixed, long-lived fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, hyaena and Arctic species, evidencing open cold landscapes. A cut-marked reindeer femur may represent Ireland’s earliest humanly processed animal, though it proves neither settlement nor identity. Later glaciation obscured much evidence there, leaving only cautious indications of changing climates, animal movements and possible brief human visits.