Earliest evidence of humans in Ireland

BBC ^ | March 21, 2016

[rdl6989]

A bear bone found in a cave may push back dates for the earliest human settlement of Ireland by 2,500 years.

The bone shows clear signs of cut marks with stone tools, and has been radiocarbon dated to 12,500 years ago.

This places humans in Ireland in the Palaeolithic era; previously, the earliest evidence of people came from the Mesolithic, after 10,000 years ago.

The brown bear bone had been stored in a cardboard box at the National Museum of Ireland for almost a century.

[rdl6989]

This artifact was stored in a box at the museum for almost a century. It makes me wonder what other important artifacts are just sitting in a box waiting to be rediscovered.

[rdl6989]

Ping.

[22202NOVA]

O’ping. It is Ireland after all.

[rdl6989]

This kind of article always seems to come up around St. Patricks Day. :D

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks rdl6989.

[Verginius Rufus]

Have they ever found any snake fossils in Ireland? (Pre-Patrick, of course.)

[Idaho_Cowboy]

This artifact was stored in a box at the museum for almost a century. It makes me wonder what other important artifacts are just sitting in a box waiting to be rediscovered.

---

Just like The Ark of the Covenant.

[going hot]

In Ireland the bear had to watch out for the caveman!

[COBOL2Java]

And next to the bear bone, the archeologists found an empty jug

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

A great deal.

If something was not unique (by the standards of the time) or pretty, it often was packed up and stuck on a shelf.

Museum basement "excavation" can be a career maker. And you don't have to live in a tent.

[dainbramaged]

Ahh, a drop of the creature.

[Rumplemeyer]

Remind me of a joke, a little Irishman goes into the men’s room at his local where a gorilla that escape from the Bronx Zoo is hiding, he attacks the Irishman and a battle ensues, heard by the entire neighbor hood, then the little guy exits the men’s room and tells the bartender “when that guy wakes up, tell him is fur coat in in the alley out back...

[JimRed]

The ice had not been gone very long 12,500 years ago. Must have been a tough life.

[Jaxter]

"It makes me wonder what other important artifacts are just sitting in a box waiting to be rediscovered."

[Little Bill]

Have they ever explained the physical difference between the Harps in the South and the Harps in the North?

I was a fan of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makum when I was a kid. Tommy was out of place, tall and raw boned he didn't have the padding that the Clancy's had.

So I looked at my mothers kin tall raw boned and nasty as opposed to other relatives who were short well padded and nasty.

[ZULU]

Lol!

[ZULU]

Don’t think so. Ireland was completely glaciated. Only one or two species of small lizard found there.

[Verginius Rufus]

Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation says of Ireland that no snake can live there--if there is a snake on a ship approaching Ireland, it dies as soon as the air from the island touches it.

Bede says nothing about St. Patrick driving the snakes from the island.

[gleeaikin]

Are you writing about Harps as people or the musical instrument. I am currently writing a novel about the evil Harpe brothers whose parents came to the US in the middle 1700s. If you know anything about that please write, private message if you wish. However, it is suggested that the parents were Scots covenanters.

[gleeaikin]

It is important how accurate the 12,500 date is. A little before that time the earth had been warming and the ice melting. Then something big happened, throwing the earth into the 1,500 year Younger Dryas cooling. It is certainly conceivable that in the several thousand years before the YD that man was living in that area, but then for a few thousand years was not able to live there because of the YD. (SC—the book?)