Ice-Age Ireland
Archived: 8 September 2026
Around 33,900 years ago, Ireland lay within a cold, unstable Late Pleistocene landscape, with regionally variable ice cover preceding the Last Glacial Maximum. Lower sea levels altered coastlines and potential animal routes. Open tundra-steppe habitats supported mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, bears and predators, evidenced especially at Castlepook Cave, County Cork. A cut-marked reindeer femur there provides limited evidence that Upper Palaeolithic hunters may briefly have visited or crossed Ireland. It does not demonstrate settlement, population continuity, polities or cultural practices. Subsequent ice expansion destroyed or obscured much evidence, leaving caves as selective archives. Post-glacial Mesolithic settlement occurred many millennia later.