The Mesolithic Era.
It was not until the Mesolithic era (middle stone age) 10,000 B.C. – 8000 B.C., that man first inhabited what is now the country of Ireland. They had crossed over from Scotland on land bridges that merged and submerged with the rise and fall of the sea. Small wooden boats made out of hollowed tree trunks were also used when there was no bridge. These people were hunters and gathers. The oldest historical evidence of any Mesolithic activity in Ireland is located in the counties :Londonderry, Sligo, and Antrim. In the 1970’s, at Mount Sandel in Londonderry, archaeologists unearthed Mesolithic huts and charcoal remains from cooking fires that date around 7000 B.C. – 6500 B.C., the earliest ever found for Ireland. Thousands of flint tools were found at “the Curran” a beach in Larne which is in Antrim, Ireland’s only flint source. Archaeologists have uncovered a Mesolithic settlement at Lough Boora, in county Offaly. Without other settlements as a guide, the Mesolithic tools found elsewhere suggests that the path of hunters spread south, along the east coast of Ireland and inland along rivers to the Shannon basin. These waterways were central and vital, as the settlers rarely strayed from them.
Around 4000 B.C. at the end of the Mesolithic era, the hunters had imitated the coiled pottery of Neolithic tribes using techniques which had spread from the more advanced Neolithic tribes of eastern Europe. The earliest earthenware of Ireland are Neolithic. A lack of relics suggest a decline in the population at the end of the Mesolithic era. This might had been a result of a wetter climate. The formation of bogs meant a lack of land that could support a steady or growing population. However, there was not enough of a population to compete for resources or territory. Therefore, while these people had flint spears it appears they were used only for hunting: fish, deer, duck, eel, and et cetera. These weapons were not used against each other for any type of warfare. A peaceful time that would eventually end. A new era was marked with the arrival of agriculture and many other advancements in technology. This was the beginning of the Neolithic period.
The Neolithic Era.
Agricultural was originally a Middle Eastern practice that spread slowly northwards to Europe. With this introduction of farming by the early Neolithic settlers from the European mainland around 4000 B.C., people spent less time hunting and more time innovating. The landscape was then tamed as forests were chopped down by using stone axes or simply burned down to make farmland. The introduction of porcellanite made these tasks easier to accomplish. The settlers brought with them: cattle, sheep, wheat and barely. Ireland before then had no cereals and no native livestock except for the wild boar. After a few centuries they built Ireland’s first of 1500 plus megaliths (3500 B.C.). This was a significant cultural breakthrough for many reasons not only for funeral and burial rites, but for: engineering, astronomy, technology, and other achievements. Later on when the Celtic culture arrived, the structures had inspired legends and myths of giants and faeries as reason for construction.
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