Awbeg Valley Bone Trail
Archived: 16 September 2026
About 31,527 BCE, Ireland lay within the climatically unstable later Marine Isotope Stage 3, not a precisely datable historical year. Organic silts at Derryvree, County Fermanagh, indicate locally habitable, treeless tundra wetlands between glacial advances. Castlepook Cave in County Cork preserves remains of reindeer, mammoth, bears, hyaenas, wolves, Arctic foxes and other cold-adapted fauna, although its mixed bone deposits require caution. A marked reindeer femur may record stone-tool butchery and thus an exceptionally early human visit, but lacks corroborating tools or occupation evidence. Later ice expansion obscured landscapes. Ireland was intermittently environmentally viable, while any contemporary human presence remains unproven.