Hyenahall’s Reindeer Corridor
Archived: 17 September 2026
About 31,414 BCE, Ireland belonged to the unstable, cold later Pleistocene, not a historically datable nation. Calibrated evidence from Derryvree, County Fermanagh, indicates treeless tundra, wet hollows and shallow freshwater before renewed glaciation buried the deposits. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves a time-mixed fauna including reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, hyena and Arctic fox, showing ecologically productive open country. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate fleeting Upper Palaeolithic human activity in Ireland, but no settlement or associated tools are proven. Shifting ice, coasts and habitats governed survival, leaving evidence of landscapes and animals rather than societies, institutions or permanent communities.