Читать книгу Irish History: People, places and events that built Ireland - Neil Hegarty - Страница 6

The human story of Ireland begins around 13,000 years ago, with the retreat of the glaciers that had covered the country during the Ice Age, followed by a slow rise in sea levels. Meadows and then scant woods of juniper and birch spread across the land, followed as the centuries passed by dense broadleaf forests. The land that became Ireland was possibly not yet an island, for land-bridges may have offered paths from Britain. However, it is clear that by 7000 BC human hunter-gatherers had crossed by land or sea to establish a permanent presence in Ireland, felling trees, spreading along the river valleys, and hewing out a livelihood amid populations of wolves, bears, boar, and smaller mammals. They dwelt in skin-roofed huts. Excavations of early settlements – on the banks of the river Bann at Mountsandel in County Derry, for example – reveal eloquent remains in the form of charcoal left by fires, flint worked into axe-heads, animal bones, and the ubiquitous shells of hazelnuts that were a mainstay of the Mesolithic diet. The population waxed and waned as the climate warmed and cooled: by 4000 BC, it is estimated that there were fewer than 10,000 people living in Ireland.