Birm-166’s Pollen Archive
Archived: 14 September 2026
31,726 BCE is a modern label within an imprecisely dated Late Pleistocene interval, rather than a recoverable Irish year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater organic sediments between glacial tills, indicating locally ice-free, cold, wet, treeless tundra and muskeg during MIS 3. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, contains a long-accumulated fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, bear and hyena, but not a single-date census. A marked reindeer femur may indicate Upper Palaeolithic butchery, although it proves neither settlement nor continuity. Ice advances later buried or destroyed evidence. Together these fragmentary archives reveal regionally varied, unstable landscapes, animal life, and possible human visitors.