Researchers believe the first people to reach Ireland thousands of years ago may have travelled from Wales, following an “exciting” discovery of ancient cave paintings in south-west Ireland.
During the last Ice Age, falling sea levels exposed a lost land bridge linking what is now Pembrokeshire in Wales with the area around Rosslare on Ireland’s south-eastern coast.
Dr George Nash, a rock art specialist at the University of Liverpool, believes hunter-gatherers would have been unlikely to ignore such a promising route between Britain and Ireland.
Working with an international team of experts, Nash has identified eight cave sites in south-west Ireland containing rock art dating back at least 15,000 years—approximately 5,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known evidence of humans in Ireland.
Nash, who coordinated the Lost Land Bridge project, said the exposed route would have featured a forest and grassland plateau stretching 46 miles (76 kilometres) from coast to coast.
Although summer temperatures may have ranged from -10 to -20 degrees Celsius, the land bridge could have supported wild horses, mammoths, bison, reindeer and other large herbivores. These animals would have fed on hardy sedges, mosses and lichens growing in fertile but largely frozen soil.
Based on his research into prehistoric human migration, Nash said he had long believed it was inconceivable that people would not have taken advantage of this natural passage between Wales and Ireland.
The discovery prompted him to bring together a multidisciplinary team from the Universities of Dublin and Adelaide, as well as researchers and academics from Dubai, Wales and Portugal.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk