A Line on Reindeer Bone
Archived: 16 September 2026
Around 31,528 BCE, Ireland lay within the unstable cold conditions of Marine Isotope Stage 3, not a datable historical year. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, yielded diverse Pleistocene fauna, including reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, hyena and lemmings. A reindeer femur, radiocarbon dated to about 33,000 years ago, bears a mark interpreted as stone-tool butchery, potentially Ireland’s earliest human evidence. This does not establish settlement, as cave deposits are disturbed and the cut’s origin remains debated. Open tundra-steppe, wetlands and changing ice margins supported intermittent animal and possible human movement. Advancing glaciation later obscured evidence, leaving fragile traces of Upper Palaeolithic visits.