Birm-166’s Freshwater World
Archived: 16 September 2026
31,607 BCE is an imprecise modern label within a Late Pleistocene range, not a recoverable Irish date. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, organic freshwater silts, sealed between glacial tills, record an ice-free Middle Devensian interval before ice expansion. Pollen, plants, mosses and insects reveal cold, treeless, tundra-like wetland and open ground, with pools, sedges, grasses, juniper and herbs. Fragmentary cave fauna elsewhere, Castlepook, indicates northern animals including reindeer, mammoth, giant deer and hyaena, but not a simultaneous community. No secure evidence establishes human settlement; a possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests only unconfirmed, fleeting human activity. Derryvree preserves a rare environmental archive.