PALAEOLITHIC MAN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 131, 7 June 1929, Page 6

PALAEOLITHIC MAN

DISCOVERY IN IRELAND

(From "The Post's" Representative.) ■'-.■■ LONDON, 25th April. Tie skeleton of the earliest man known to have.inhabited Ireland lias been discovered in a cave in County Waterfoid. He was a member of a prehistoric race, and the unearthing of, his remains throws important .light on the anthropology and : archaeology. not only of Ireland, but of ]iuppe as a: whole. •.■.'.. .•The discovery .was described in a communication made to the Royal-Irish Academy byllr A.E.K,Tratman, 8.D.5., of the Bristol University Archaeological Society. 'Members of that society, assisted by four Dublin students, with the aid of a substantial grant from the Royal Irish Academy, carried out excavations at Kil-: gieavy,;,eo. Waterford, in .July of last Excavations were made in a cave. The iirst objects of antiquity disclosed were an iron knifeand, other articles which have been identified with the- period of the La Tene culture. \ , . . Below, the first hearth came a lighter coloured; layer representing a time when the cave was not occupied by mani This layer of earth and stones rested on a thin band ; ,of charcoal.., In the second hearth'from this level came a considerable number of human bones. This hearth is dated, from part of a polished stone axe, as being about the end of the Neolithic period. ; Below the second hearth was an intact stalagmite 'floor^resting on yet another hearth. On. this, third hearth had been placed a body with the; left side against the' cave wall, and a pile of stones on the outer side to keep ths body, in,position. The skull was. extricated from the stalagmite almost intact. :: ■ Eminent anthropologists,: to whom the skull was submitted, are, of opinion that it is probably of late Palaeolithic date. This opinion is supported by the presence of bones of the brown bear, wolf, ox, wild cat, an early, form of ox, Irish elk, reindeer, and a field of vole (Microtus Arvalis the first vole recorded from Ireland). The fauna, in the opinion of the experts to whom the remain's were submitted, is undoubtedly of the late Pleistocene. The iauna also allows the tentative speculation that the remains are of the period known, as; Magdelenian on the Continent. ' -In;; the-, opinion of the the individual to whom the skull belonged was aged about 40.. At present the individual is put down as a member of the Celtibenan race—that is, a Mediterranean type, .This is the :first discovery of Palaeolithic man in Ireland.