Elephant Hall’s Cold Archive
Archived: 17 September 2026
31,447 BCE cannot be treated as a precise Irish historical year; evidence instead describes a broad late Pleistocene cold interval before the Last Glacial Maximum. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves buried freshwater wetland deposits indicating treeless, tundra-like conditions with sedges, mosses, insects and limited forage. Castlepook Cave, north Cork, contains time-averaged remains of reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, hyaena and other animals, showing intermittent links with Britain and continental Europe. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests brief Upper Palaeolithic human activity, but lacks supporting artefacts or settlement evidence. Later ice expansion erased much evidence, leaving a cautious picture of habitable, fluctuating landscapes.