Derryvree’s Sedgebound Interval
Archived: 15 September 2026
Circa 31,639 BCE, Ireland was not a historical society but a cold Late Pleistocene landscape subject to rapid climatic change. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater silts between glacial tills, indicating locally ice-free tundra wetlands with sedges, mosses and cold-adapted insects roughly 36,900–31,700 years BP. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, accumulated bones over millennia, documenting mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, bears, hyenas and later cold fauna. These finds demonstrate changing habitats and connections with north-west Europe, but not settled human communities. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate brief human activity, whereas secure evidence dates only to about 12,800 BP. Later ice advanced.