Alice and Gwendoline Cave

This is a limestone cave near the town of Ennis in County Clare, Ireland. The cave is named for two nieces of T J Westropp the late Irish archaeologist, antiquarian and folklorist.

c.12,800 years ago near to the cave a Palaeolithic hunter killed a bear and dragged its carcass back to the cave to be butchered thus it was in 2016 that the surviving bear kneecap or patella, that was originally recovered in 1902, found to have man-made cuts marks which are widely believed to be the most conclusive evidence of the earliest occupation of Ireland by humans.

The Palaeolithic hunter of the bear must have been amongst the first humans to have lived in this part of Ireland following the retreat of the ice at the end of the last Ice Age.

It was the retreating of the ice caps that was one of the reasons for the rising sea levels in northern Europe which created the island of Ireland.

Source: ‘Ireland’s Forgotten Past: A History of the Overlooked & Disremembered’ by Turtle Bunbury (ISBN: 978-0-500-02253-5)