Evidence of Palaeolithic humans in ireland

slowburner

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Is this the project that revisited the above finds in particular ?

The initial find was made by Ruth Carden of the National Museum of Ireland, and as far as I can gather, the intent is to revisit similar collections - subject to funding etc.

robp

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Fighting leprechaun 20

Conall Cernach wrote: »

Well, this is just one bone that has been identified so far so evidence of anything from that time period is few and far between and maybe we just haven't come across it yet. Humans from that period might have cremated their dead and so there might not be too many bones lying about the place. Some of the evidence may have been found but was catalogued incorrectly. This bear bone is an example of that as it was found in the early 20th century before carbon dating and so no one suspected that it could have been earlier than was generally accepted for humans to have been in Ireland. Perhaps if everything was carbon dated now we might discover that there are loads of items from that time.

Then maybe a lot of evidence has been destroyed and lies under more modern development. Or perhaps the bone doesn't come from an Irish bear and was only brought to Ireland much later than the bear was killed.

Funny enough I remember seeing an article of cremated remains found here , they were from the mesolithic however but I see no reason why the same practice wouldn't be carried out

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Hi Mountainsandh,

According to many sources, sea levels were approximately 130m lower than current levels, so most of the Irish sea would have been dry as was the North Sea during the same period.

Hope this helps, "By 15,000 years ago only Ulster was still buried under the dying ice sheet. Although the rising sea levels had begun to flood the lower lands, a land bridge still connected the south-eastern tip of Ireland to south-western England.", Quoted from


Exactly . I believe black water valley was ice free for much longer even during the cold snap , that's why we find animals such as hyena bear wolf horses mammoth and so on going back 20,000 -40,000 years.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

So this would be around the same time as the cave-paintings and bone work at Cresswell on Derby/Nottingham border?

Yes I believe both are from 13,000 BP.

Fighting leprechaun 20

robp wrote: »

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Add your reply here.

Yes it is indisputable -the Cutts were exaimed by 3 specialists under high powered microscopes and all 3 came to the same conclusion that the cuts were made on fresh bone 13,000 years ago, the findings were than published and reviewed.

As I said indispensable.

Fighting leprechaun 20

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

robp wrote: »

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Add your reply here.

Yes it is indisputable -the Cutts were exaimed by 3 specialists under high powered microscopes and all 3 came to the same conclusion that the cuts were made on fresh bone 13,000 years ago, the findings were than published and reviewed.

As I said undispensable.

Add your reply here.

Sourse -Quaternary Science Reviews (QSR).

Paddico

Fascinating stuff.

Has the actually cave been mentioned?

Fighting leprechaun 20

UsedToWait wrote: »

No worries..

So, as someone who knows nothing about Archaeology, who were the people who killed the bear, and where are they likely to have come to Ireland from?
What type of people are we talking about - what type of civilization / language / tools would they have had?

And why is there no evidence of human bones from the period, rather than animal bones that they would have butchered?

edit: (Or should I be looking in the Anthropology forum for such information?)

Human bones from the palaeolithic are incredibly rare and almost impossible to find . We generally go off evidence of tools or some other indication such as this one .

cfuserkildare

It just seems surprising that there are so few finds here,

Considering how close sites like the Cresswell Crags in DerbyShire/Nottinghamshire are.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

It just seems surprising that there are so few finds here,

Considering how close sites like the Cresswell Crags in DerbyShire/Nottinghamshire are.

Well the ice did a number on the landscape and the research into palaeolithic Ireland is almost none existent they don't even teach it in studies. So even if it was staring them in the face they probably wouldn't be able to identify it. Thank the incompetent education system for that one. I have no doubt there were palaeolithic people here for hundreds of thousands of years. . Finding undeniable evidence is another matter.

Wibbs

I reckon the first order of business would be to try to identify possible sites that could have preserved the kind of deposits where evidence might be found. Given the repeated glaciation cave systems in the south west of the country might be the best bet?

tac foley

Worth a look at.....................http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ancient.htm

tac

Mountainsandh

Wibbs wrote: »

I reckon the first order of business would be to try to identify possible sites that could have preserved the kind of deposits where evidence might be found. Given the repeated glaciation cave systems in the south west of the country might be the best bet?

And the Cappagh valley cave system in the South East. I think some professors are revisiting that idea too.

slowburner

tac foley wrote: »

Worth a look at.....................http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ancient.htm

tac

Worth a look with a critical, and informed eye. Definitely not to be taken as established fact.

tac foley

...for the map, showing the far SE corner of the island still connected to the British peninsular at that time.............

tac

Aelfric

What I fail to understand, is that for many many years, academics have been trying to find the Irish Palaeolithic, trying to think about where it might have survived. In Britain, Palaeolithic evidence turns up during gravel extraction etc., where the Aggregates Levy funds monitoring and excavation of gravel/sand quarries etc., and yet there's nothing similar happening here in Ireland. How do people expect to find evidence of the Irish Palaeolithic if they're looking in the wrong places? Anything currently resembling ground level is vastly different from the levels 15k years ago. Caves, I suppose are a logical choice, but there are bound to be buried palaeochannels and stuff out there that contain good evidence. We just stop at the top of (current) subsoil.

tac foley

TBH, compared with the rest of the British Isles, Ireland is very poorly-off for caves, notwithstanding that a few of them are pretty extensive and impressive systems in their own right -

Caves that lie partly or wholly within Northern Ireland are marked with an asterisk (*).
Mythological caves are marked with a dagger (†).
Ailwee Cave, County Clare
Badger Pot, County Fermanagh*
Boho Caves, County Fermanagh*
Cloyne Cave, County Cork
Crag Cave, County Kerry
Dunmore Cave, County Kilkenny
Fintan's Grave, County Tipperary†
Kelly's Cave, County Mayo
Killavullen Caves, County Cork
Marble Arch Caves, County Fermanagh*
Mitchelstown Cave, County Tipperary
Noon's Hole, County Fermanagh*
Pol an Ionain, County Clare
Pollatoomary, County Mayo
Pollnagollum–Poulelva, County Clare
Portbraddon Cave, County Antrim*
Shannon Cave, County Cavan and County Fermanagh*

Nor am I certain exactly what is meant by 'mythological' cave formations. Excavating caves that only exist in myth and legend is very difficult.

There seems to be no Irish 'version' of the Cheddar Gorge, either. Given the extreme paucity of current Irish archeological work efforts, I think it's fair to say that we'll never know in our lifetimes just about anything more than we already do - and THAT is almost non-existent.

It's all very sad.

tac

Mountainsandh

Sorry to harp on about the same point over and over, but the cave system near Dungarvan is noteworthy, and not quite fully explored.

About one of the caves :

From a palaeontological perspective Ballynamintra is critically important. It is
one of just two Irish sites (with Castlepook) where faunal remains of Midlandian
and Late Glacial date have been discovered and it is one of just four caves
(Shandon, Castlepook and Foley caves being the other three) that has fauna
belonging to a period earlier than the Last Glacial Maximum. The recovery of the
fauna from archetypal cave sediments - grey earths and tufa, sandy earths and possible
debris flows (with shattered stalagmitic floors) and breccias - is also
significant

... it is evident from the published excavation
report that the cave's sedimentological sequence is of much greater complexity
than that described; the lithostratigraphy and likely lithogenesis of the
sequence is not known, nor are the ages of many of the excavated units...
(mention of techniques used at another cave)
The critical reason why such studies are carried out is to
allow for the prediction of the likely locations, broad types and survival states of a
variety of Late Pleistocene deposits, and by extension the potential for the discovery
of Palaeolithic archaeology. For these reasons it is proposed to undertake a new
phase of fieldwork at Bal1ynamintra

This is from a very interesting pdf hosted by Waterford co Council http://snap.waterfordcoco.ie/collections/ejournals/100779/100779.pdf
Decies Journal of the Waterford Archeological & Historical Society, #65, 2009.

I don't know if the above mentioned further research has been undertaken yet, certainly the economical climate did not help, but it is mentioned that erosion was a threat to the site.

edit : Google search "cave system Dungarvan" has a good selection of links on the topic. Kilgreany being the most "popular".

tac foley

'...Shandon, Castlepook and Foley caves being the other three...'

Ah, fame at last.

tac

Fighting leprechaun 20

l understand skepticism but they flat out deny evidence . and claim things that simply aren't true out of self inflicted ignorance .

there have been paleo finds here .

the discovery of a butchered bear bone 10,500-10,800 BC discovered by Dr Dowd in the Alice and Gwendoline cave is tantamount evidence. the cut marks made by a flint tool on the bone are contemporary with the age of the bone . it was butchered fresh . it was originally discovered in 1903 by a team of irish archaeologists along with thousands of other bones . interestingly the archaeologists did make comments on the bear bone remarking on the cuts on the bone but they had obviously no way of dating it back than .

there have been various paleo finds here ranging from 500,000 bc to 20,000 bc. however they have been said to have arrived here from the irish sea and somewhere else in Europe .

Animals of ireland dating to 50,000 bc -20,000 bc with older dates being sporadic.

hyenas .wolfs . ground sloths . bears . irish elk . woolly mammoths . woolly rhinos . reindeer . horses . Norway
lemming, lynx, mountain hare and stoat .red deer .ect .all these fossils found in caves .. The preservation of this material probably
had much to do with their location south of the limit of the last Midlandian ice-
sheet.

its worth mentioning there may have been animals present for which there is no current data at all .


the crux of the problem is erosion . (Woodman 1986; 1998).
the destructive affects wrought by the Pleistocene
glaciations would have scrapped the island clean .however Ballynamuck cave was excavated by Dr. Simon Collcutt who determined the sediments to be from
c.220,000- 125,000 bc. suggesting rare finds could indeed have survived in irish caves from the Pleistocene age. though its not like anyone has actually looked .

with britain and france being populated for some 750,000 years & a million years with ireland being attached to mainland europe for such long periods of time lt seems impossible that paleo man wasn't
here going back hundreds of thousands of years. but unlike england we dont really have such a rich untouched deposits to work from .

cfuserkildare

Not so sure Erosion would be such an issue,

When you look at where Cresswell Crags are, level with Kilcoole, Monasterevin, Birr etc.
Cresswell wasn't Glaciated, or damaged by Glaciation at least as it was a site of occupation during these periods.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Not so sure Erosion would be such an issue,

When you look at where Cresswell Crags are, level with Kilcoole, Monasterevin, Birr etc.
Cresswell wasn't Glaciated, or damaged by Glaciation at least as it was a site of occupation during these periods.

The problem is current wicklow was heavily scrapped during the end of the last ice age Infact alot of wicklows landmass was molded by this .for example Glendalough Valley was carved out by glaciers during the last cold snap . The animal fossils l mentioned were all found in cork and waterford which wasnt as badly glaciated by the end of the last cold stage.dungarvan ect . Cresswell as you mentioned wasnt damaged by glaciers. The last Cold Stage in cresswell ended some 60,000 years ago and as such evidence after this time isnt hard to come by . Wicklow was as such any evidence of previous layers would have been pulverized . This is why archaeologists looking into a paleo ireland do not focus on wicklow As the example l gave above .

Wibbs

I suppose the question I'd ask is how many of these potential paleo sites have been excavated, beyond a cursory survey? And with the current not exactly overwhelmed with resources state of Irish archaeology how likely will they be? I'm quite sure many in the field would relish the chance to dig deeper(no pun).

Fighting leprechaun 20

Wibbs wrote: »

I suppose the question I'd ask is how many of these potential paleo sites have been excavated, beyond a cursory survey? And with the current not exactly overwhelmed with resources state of Irish archaeology how likely will they be? I'm quite sure many in the field would relish the chance to dig deeper(no pun).

The answer wont surprise you very few ..if any . Infact None that im aware of . most of those Upper Paleolithic animal finds are from the 20th century kek ... l have half a mind to start frequenting these areas my self perhaps old finds should be re-examined . Do You think longford & clare holds promise for some paleo finds? and perhapes some saber-toothed cats

cfuserkildare

I did hear a rumour that there is a cave somewhere within easy travel of Edenderry.

Farmer who owns the land won't disclose its very existence though.

Cianmcliam

Wibbs wrote: »

I suppose the question I'd ask is how many of these potential paleo sites have been excavated, beyond a cursory survey? And with the current not exactly overwhelmed with resources state of Irish archaeology how likely will they be? I'm quite sure many in the field would relish the chance to dig deeper(no pun).

A good selection of Irish caves have been extensively searched, turning up mammoth bones and hyena bones from the Midlandian period, and Irish bogs and lake sediments have also been extensively studied. Plenty of Irish Elk and reindeer bones have been unearthed in and along former lake edges where they drowned in boggy water. None have shown any signs of butchery. This period would have been the most suitable for Palaeolithic hunters, 16,000-11,000 years ago, when Ireland was mostly grassland with lots of large mammals, yet they don't turn up in any of the sediments.

The Younger Dryas may have seen smaller glaciers showing up in mountainous regions but not enough ice would have melted to wash away every trace of humans but not animals. The lowlands were more likely to have been overlaid by permafrost that would have sealed deposits below.

The Giant Elk and reindeer didn't survive the Younger Dryas so the beginning of the Holocene left Ireland with no large mammals, hence nothing to attract paleo hunters. One of the reasons the Giant Elk seems to have flourished here but not so much in Britain is that it had no natural predators, which seems to have included humans and their hunting toolkits.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

I did hear a rumour that there is a cave somewhere within easy travel of Edenderry.

Farmer who owns the land won't disclose its very existence though.

Kek never trust an offally farmer interestingily ive read offcally had some nice red wood forrests sounds perfect for bison or wild boar .The problem with the ice sheets is they are so destructive they destroy near all the evidence l can just picture the farmer now digging all that grey limestone out destroying Middle Paleolithic finds .

Wibbs

Cianmcliam wrote: »

This period would have been the most suitable for Palaeolithic hunters, 16,000-11,000 years ago, when Ireland was mostly grassland with lots of large mammals, yet they don't turn up in any of the sediments.

It's an odd conundrum indeed CC. Especially given that even far more primitive humans show up on islands in the rest of the globe and modern humans seem to show up in pretty short order when conditions change even slightly for the better. That said, even with far more extensive sediments surviving in the UK human occupation sites are rare enough. Well modern human ones anyway. The earlier archaic human paleo stuff is relatively common. Far longer periods of relative stability over time for a start. Taken over a period of half a million years, even uncommon events and deposits can start to look common.

Are there any such earlier sediments present here CC? I mean pre say 50,000 kya stuff? I suppose one would have to identify a time when Ireland was connected to mainland europe(and/or the UK) in the last 500,000 years and sift through that for lithics or evidence of butchery.

Other issues may have been the relative lack of decent material for making tools here. Parts of southern England are chock full of very high quality flint on the surface and by the Neolithic an industry in the stuff was well in play. Quite different to here. There's plenty of examples from elsewhere when other materials other than the cherts were utilised(quartzites and the like), but it might have been a factor? Any occupation was likely sporadic and in tiny numbers too. Doubly so for archaic humans who were never common in the landscape anyway(like any apex predator). Neandertals throughout their range were the most "common" before Sapiens, but best estimates give a number of 40,000 across Eurasia at their peak.

If they did make it here, it was likely by the tiny handful and not for very long, so to find evidence of them would require the right sediments, in the right place and time, when they were present and a huge dollop of luck. IIRC there were some late 19th century finds from Galway(?) claimed as possible Neandertal and they were referenced here ages ago, but they looked about as Neandertal/Mousterian as the Tara Brooch.

Fighting leprechaun 20

Cianmcliam wrote: »

A good selection of Irish caves have been extensively searched, turning up mammoth bones and hyena bones from the Midlandian period, and Irish bogs and lake sediments have also been extensively studied. Plenty of Irish Elk and reindeer bones have been unearthed in and along former lake edges where they drowned in boggy water. None have shown any signs of butchery. This period would have been the most suitable for Palaeolithic hunters, 16,000-11,000 years ago, when Ireland was mostly grassland with lots of large mammals, yet they don't turn up in any of the sediments.

The Younger Dryas may have seen smaller glaciers showing up in mountainous regions but not enough ice would have melted to wash away every trace of humans but not animals. The lowlands were more likely to have been overlaid by permafrost that would have sealed deposits below.

The Giant Elk and reindeer didn't survive the Younger Dryas so the beginning of the Holocene left Ireland with no large mammals, hence nothing to attract paleo hunters. One of the reasons the Giant Elk seems to have flourished here but not so much in Britain is that it had no natural predators, which seems to have included humans and their hunting toolkits.

As far as l know the only caves searched were a century ago in 1903 and they werent extensively searched though . The bones from the mammoths and hyena irish elk were found by the same group who discovered the butchered bear .it wasnt hyena *bones* though it was only one fragment of a bone the skull cap .and the only fragment of hyena ever found on this island .
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.museum.ie/The-Collections/Documentation-Discoveries/May-2013/Spotted-Hyena-Skull&ved=0ahUKEwjknPKZ1vHRAhWLCcAKHWPjCfYQFggZMAA&usg=AFQjCNEEKI_526ASiDV8NRdTRMP2qmwUyg&sig2=sknInXcA6MEmBkXs7pXrNQ

As they shouldn't thats an extreamly rare find l was obviously refering to this http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379116300610

Sadly The oldest irish elk bones ever found in an irish bog or lake dont pre date anything above 11,000 years infact im not even sure if anything in ireland was ever found on the surface that is older than 10,000 BCE let alone in a bog water . The old stuff is located beneath the caves some 40,000 bc we have already talked about .
Infact mesolithic people in ireland would often find irish elk bones and would often place them in bogs normally the antlers.

gaint irish elk migrated back to ireland about 11,000 bc by landbridge . At 11,000 to 10,000 radiocarbon years ago (or perhaps 10500bce )Obviously paleo human remains are very rare and you would not find them in bogs . Paleo peoples were small bands of hunters nomads normally outnumbered by animals by 1000s to one . They normally did not stay in the same place for long .

During the last glaciation ice covered the entire country was covered by ice except for
possibly a small area in west Limerick and north Kerry cork . The
erosive power of an ice sheet one kilometer deep on the underlying landscape was
phenomenal. Only our highest mountains peaks werent completly covered . so everything under this level was scoured, planed, smoothed or bulldozed,
and in most cases then covered by the massive amount of debris that were left by the ice
after it retreated.

This is why we only find remains from 40,000 bp in areas in caves from areas such as cork and waterford as they were not hit as hard by the ice sheets nor as badly glaciered.

Of course there were paleo people in ireland going back hundreds of thousands of years we were attached to the main land of europe for over a million years during the ice age with warm spells normally lasting centuries .

Obviously the irish elk had predators wolves and bears are both within the same time frame archeolgical record as the irish elk . Infact irish brown bear didnt die out in ireland until 1000 bc and wolfs until the 17th century in ireland .and yes humans probably hunted them in ireland as well.

Can you state your sources l find this very interesting .