Derryvree’s Insect Ledger
Archived: 17 September 2026
Around 31,498 BCE, Ireland cannot be described through precise dates or written history, but environmental evidence reveals a variable late-Pleistocene landscape. Organic silts at Derryvree, County Fermanagh, indicate an ice-free freshwater wetland with treeless tundra vegetation, mosses, sedges and northern insects during part of MIS 3. Other deposits suggest regional, rather than continuous, ice cover. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, hyaena, Arctic fox and lemmings, demonstrating open, cold habitats. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate Upper Palaeolithic human activity, but cannot prove settlement. Later ice expansion destroyed or buried much evidence from landscapes.