Mandy Wan |
A bone, which has been proven to have originated from a brown bear, has been discovered in a cave in Ireland. This uncovering has a possibility of pushing back dates of the oldest human settlement in the country by approximately 2,500 years.
Prominent indentations upon the bone are said to be caused by stone tools. Additionally, it has been radiocarbon dated ( a method of determining the rough age of an object with the use of the radioactive isotopes of carbon ) to 12,500 years ago.
The previous earliest proof of humans living in Ireland has been the settlement of hunter-gatherers located at Mount Sandel, adjacent to the River Bann.
For the better half of the 19h Century, antiquarians and scientists have been looking for an Irish Stone Age or formally known as the Palaeolithic Era.
During the course of over a hundred years, the odd Palaeolithic tool has been identified but each and every one would later be classed as items that were carried over by geological movements, from Britain.
It has been speculated that patella, commonly known as the knee bone, goes back to the end of the Ice Age.
The recent detection of man-made marks was due to Dr Marion Dowd, an archaeologist at IT Sligo; and Dr Ruth Carden, from the National Museum of Ireland. Clearly, it is a phenomenal discovery, as expressed by the former:
“Archaeologists have been searching for the Irish Palaeolithic since the 19th Century, and now, finally, the first piece of the jigsaw has been revealed. This find adds a new chapter to the human history of Ireland.“
At first, the bear bone had been uncovered in 1903. From then on, it has been stored in the National Museum of Ireland since the early 1920’s.
However, when Dr Carden began re-analysing the subject with significantly more advanced technology, Dr Dowd became intrigued and the two set off to radiocarbon date the bone at Queen’s University Belfast. Evidentially, they were taken aback by the results that their investigation yielded:
“When a Palaeolithic date was returned, it came as quite a shock. Here we had evidence of someone butchering a brown bear carcass and cutting through the knee probably to extract the tendons.“
It has been confirmed that the impressions has been slashed into fresh bone, meaning that humans were indeed residing in Ireland during the Palaeolithic age.
“This made sense as the location of the marks spoke of someone trying to cut through the tough knee joint, perhaps someone who was inexperienced…In their repeated attempts, they left seven marks on the bone surface. The implement used would probably have been something like a long flint blade.”
