The BIRM-166 Landscape
Archived: 17 September 2026
Around 31,497 BCE, Ireland was a climatically unstable Late Pleistocene landscape rather than a datable year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between successive glacial tills, indicating cold, open periglacial wetlands during part of MIS 3. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, produced remains of reindeer, giant deer, bears, wolves, Arctic foxes, hyaenas and possibly mammoths, though cave contexts are disturbed and revised dating is essential. An incised reindeer bone may indicate butchery but cannot prove settlement. No evidence supports resident communities, agriculture, trade, polities or culture. Later glaciation erased much evidence, leaving a treeless, intermittently accessible Ice Age frontier for fauna.