Derryvree’s Drumlin Window
Archived: 14 September 2026
Around 31,714 BCE, Ireland lay within the climatically unstable Late Pleistocene, not a dated historical moment. Evidence from Derryvree, County Fermanagh, records an ice-free freshwater wetland of open, treeless tundra-like vegetation during later MIS 3, subsequently buried by glacial deposits. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves a complex, long-lived fauna including mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, bears and hyaenas, but not a single contemporary community. A possibly tool-marked reindeer bone suggests tentative Upper Palaeolithic human activity, yet no settlement, tools or other secure assemblage confirms occupation. Changing ice, sea levels and erosion shaped connections and destroyed evidence, leaving ecological and geological history.