First Irish people in Dungarvan...

Searching for the first Irish people in Dungarvan valley between Dungarvan and Lismore, the limestone-floored valley is riddled with over 25 caves. One of them, Shandon Cave, just outside Dungarvan was quarried away in the nineteenth century and the site now accommodates Cork Marts. It is among Co. Waterford's three famous bone caves and in it were found the bones of Giant Deer (sometimes called the Irish Elk), Woolly Mammoth and Reindeer-all animals that roamed the area as Ireland's south coast was escaping some of the rigours of the last Ice Age.

Another two of these caves, both little-known and full to the top with washed-in soil, are of interest at the moment as Dr. Coilin O'Drisceoil from Kilkenny and his Oxford University-based colleagues Drs. Richard Jennings and Simon Collcutt have been digging small trial pits in search of the remains of what might be Ireland's earliest people. At the moment they are looking for a layer of an ancient grey soil type that, if they find it, would be the place to concentrate their efforts. The project is part-funded by the Heritage Council and licenced by the National Monuments Service.

So far nobody has been able to find human traces in Ireland older that about 9,000 years old. That period is called the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic Age and it started at the melting of the last ice sheets that covered most of Ireland. What the Dungarvan Caves Project aims to do is to see if people were here during the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic Age. The Dungarvan Valley is the place to look because the area has caves and was part of a green fringe on an otherwise ice-covered Ireland.  It is also known that Mammoths, Wild Horses and deer were available here for hunting. Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the lack of Paleolithic remains in Ireland and many are watching this project with great interest