Celtic Scholar's World

 A Basic Irish Timeline of Prehistory

c.10,000 BCE - Ice Age ended in Ireland

c.8,000 BCE - Earliest evidence of human occupation.  They may have come from Scotland and first colonized the northwest of Ireland.  They crossed from south Scotland into county Antrim. Most of the Mesolithic sites in Ireland are coastal settlements.  They hunted with spears, arrows, and harpoons tipped with small stone blades called microliths.  They lived in seasonal shelters, constructed from animal skins and wood.  They had outdoor hearths for cooking.  They ate fish, birds, wild boar, hazelnuts, fruits, and berries.

c.7,000 BCE to 6,000 BCE - Later Mesolithic period starts.  Short-term food and raw material procurement and processing camps.  They used large stone blades for their tools.  The processing camps are oriented toward coasts, estuaries, rivers, and lakes.

c.4,000 BCE to 2,500 BCE- Later Mesolithic period ends and the Neolithic period starts.  The Neolithic package arrived in Ireland around 4,500 BCE.  Population rose significantly, and the most striking characteristics of the Neolithic period in Ireland are the sudden appearance of  megalithic monuments (Court tombs, Passage tombs, Portal tombs, and Wedge tombs).  They seemed to have been used for religious and ceremonial rituals, as well as burials.  Grave goods were also found in these megaliths.  They ate sheep, goats, cattle and cereals (wheat and barley).  Also during this period small fields separated from one another by dry-stone walls were utilized, pottery was used that was similar to what was found in Britain.

c.2,500 BCE to 500 BCE - Copper and Bronze Ages.  Around 2,500 BCE there seems to have been an economic collapse of some sort and the population decreased dramatically for a while.  New technologies arrived with the Bell Beaker Folk.  The Bronze Age began c. 2,000BCE.  Bronze Age equipment included swords, axes, dagger, hatchets, halberds, awls, drinking utensils, and horn-shaped trumpets.  Lots of gold hoards were discovered in Ireland that date to that period.

c.500 BCE to 400 CE - Irish Iron Age.  This was the period where the Celts are first mentioned by both the Greeks and the Romans.  Q-Celtic was already spoken in Ireland, with very little evidence of Hallstatt or La Téne style art.  There was, however, some Irish versions of them.

**No one is exactly sure when the Celtic language arrived in Ireland or how it arrived.  There are as many theories as there are archeologists and linguists.  What is certain is that by 500 BCE the language was very much already established in Ireland.

Selected Bibliography:

1. Harbison, Peter. Pre-Christian Ireland: From the First Settlers to the Early Celts. Thames and Hudson: London, UK. 1988.
2. Raftery, Barry.  Pagan Celtic Ireland: The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age.  Thames and Hudson: London, UK. 1994.
3. Barry, T. A History of Settlement in Ireland. Routledge: USA. 2000
4. Bradley, R. The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press: UK. 2007
5. Waddell, J. The Celticization of the West: An Irish Perspective, in C. Chevillot and A. Coffyn (eds), L’Age du Bronze Atlantique. Actes du ler Colloque de Beynac, Beynac. 1991

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