Derryvree’s Clubmoss Basin
Archived: 17 September 2026
31,411 BCE is a retrospective label, approximately 33,361 cal BP, not a date permitting year-specific Irish history. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater organic sediments between tills, documenting an ice-free Middle Midlandian interval within fluctuating glacial conditions. Its sedges, mosses, clubmoss, dwarf willow and other remains indicate treeless periglacial wetlands rather than continuous ice or forest. Later ice buried this local archive as ice-sheet expansion developed. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, contains cold-adapted fauna and reindeer bone with a possible stone-tool cut mark, suggesting but not proving brief Upper Palaeolithic human visits. No settlement, tools, ritual, economy or political society is known.