First Irish settlers were mariners claim researchers

Researchers from the University of Ulster have found compelling new evidence to suggest that the first inhabitants of Ireland were mariners.

While the mythical tale of Finn McCool building a bridge from Ireland to Scotland is nothing more than fantasy, but the notion that the two countries were once joined by a land bridge is a commonly held belief among scientists.

Dr Andrew Cooper and his team from the Centre for Coastal and Marine Research at UU have joined forces with the University of Maine, in a bid to rediscover forgotten Irish landscapes buried thousands of metres beneath the sea.

Dr Cooper said: “At the end of the last Ice Age, sea-level in Northern Ireland was about 30 metres lower than it is now. That means the sea now covers a large area of formerly dry land. The coring equipment allows us to retrieve sediments from the seafloor containing remains of these former landscapes. The remains can give us vital information about past environmental conditions.

“The submerged landscapes were dry land about 10,000 years ago, at about the same time as the first humans arrived in Ireland. People most likely lived and hunted on these ancient coastal plains.

Dr Cooper and his team have been using specialist marine coring equipment, shipped in from the United States and the Department of Agriculture’s research vessel, the Lough Foyle, to extract samples of the seabed around the Northern Ireland coastline.

The samples will help them find out about what life was like 10,000 years ago, when the submerged land was part of the island, and when the first humans arrived in Ireland.

(MB)