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Fragment of Bear Bone from Cave
County Clare
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The recent
announcement that scientists had dated a fragment of bear bone to 10,500 BC,
thereby, pushing back the date for human occupation in Ireland by 2,500 years,
has caused quite a stir in the academic community. Until now, the earliest
known human activity in Ireland was dated to the Mesolithic period around
8,000BC at Mount Sandel in Derry.
Remarkably, the
bear bone was discovered in a cave in County Clare in 1903 but lay for over a
century in a storage box in the National Museum of Ireland. Dr Marion Dowd of
IT Sligo and Dr Ruth Carden of the National Museum decided to examine the bone
and subject it to radiocarbon dating. Dr Dowd is a lecturer in Prehistoric
Archaeology at IT Sligo’s School of Science and is a specialist in Irish cave
archaeology.
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| Excavation in 1903 |
Tests revealed
that the patella or knee bone of the brown bear – which showed clear marks of
the animal having been butchered - dated back to the Palaeolithic period around
10,500 BC. Brown bears are believed to have become extinct in Ireland around
1,000BC. This incredible discovery is set to re-write Ireland’s settlement
history showing that humans were hunting in Ireland much earlier than
previously thought. A second round of radiocarbon tests confirmed that the bear
died circa 10,500BC.
“Here we had
evidence of someone butchering a brown bear carcass and cutting through the
knee probably to extract the tendons. Yes, we expected a prehistoric date, but
the Palaeolithic result took us completely by surprise,” said Dr Dowd.
Further analysis
of the cut marks on the bone by experts from the British Museum, University of
York and European University in Hungary revealed the marks were made on fresh
bone and dated from the same era. Repeated attempts by early hunters to cut
through the tough knee joint left seven marks on the bone surface. Experts
think that the implement used would probably have been something like a long
flint blade.
As the bone was in fresh condition it is thought
that these early hunters were carrying out activities in the immediate
vicinity - perhaps butchering a bear inside the cave or at the cave
entrance. Dr Dowd believes they were extracting the tendons for use as string
or for sewing, while the bear carcass would also have provided food and fur.
Some 12,500 years ago the last Ice Age was coming
to an end in Ireland. As the ice retreated northwards, humans followed the thaw
from central and southern Europe. Ireland was still connected to Britain at
this point, as was Britain to mainland Europe. Ireland became an island about
8,700 years ago, as the last land bridges between here and Scotland were washed
over.
It appears that archaeological text books may have
to be re-written to reflect these new findings. This is particularly exciting
given that experts have only recently started to appreciate the extent of human
occupation in Ireland during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age (8,000 – 4,000
BC) with about twenty important sites identified around Ireland. It has been argued that evidence for the
Mesolithic Period in Ireland has gone largely unrecognised and where this
exists the extent of the evidence has been overlooked.
Where did the
first Irish settlers come from? Scholars believe that the most likely
‘homelands’ of the earliest human colonists in Ireland are Scotland, Isle of
Man and Wales.
Archaeologists
now hope to conduct a detailed examination of the cave itself using modern
forensic equipment. Meanwhile, we wait with bated breath for the National
Museum of Ireland to give up more of its fascinating secrets.
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