An article on the BBC by Neil Prior - Ancient cave art discovery suggests first known humans in Ireland walked over from Wales - reports on the discovery of ancient rock art which may help prove that the first known humans to set foot on Ireland thousands of years ago were most likely from Wales.
During the most recent Ice Age, when much of the British Isles were beneath a vast continental glacier, the depleted sea levels opened a 'lost land bridge' between modern-day Pembrokeshire and the south-east tip of Ireland, around Rosslare. According to rock expert Dr George Nash, from Liverpool University, the opportunities presented by this pathway would have been too good for hunter gatherers to ignore. Now, alongside an international team of experts, Nash has located eight cave sites in south-west Ireland featuring rock art dating back from at least 15,000 years ago, around 5,000 years before the previous oldest example of humans in Ireland.
Nash, who coordinated the Lost Land Bridge Project, said there would have been a forested and grassland plateau around 46 miles (76 km) coast-to-coast. With summertime temperatures typically -10°C to -20°C, Nash said the pathway would have supported wild horses, mammoth, bison, reindeer and other large herbivores, which fed off the hardy sedges, mosses and lichens growing through the fertile, but near-frozen soil. He believes that it was inconceivable that people would not have utilised the opportunity the pathway presented.
This led him to assemble his multi-disciplinary team of experts from University College Dublin and the University of Adelaide, along with academics from Dubai, Wales and Portugal. "Up until now the earliest evidence archaeologists had found - through accidental discovery - was from around 10,500 years ago, but everyone - not just me - knew that simply couldn't have been correct. We just weren't looking hard enough, and not in the right places. The principle we worked on was 'absence of proof isn't proof of absence'."
Nash states that advances in AI had been a game-changer. "With the help of caving specialist Shane Diffily and digital mapping consultant Darren Lee, we were able to fill a computer algorithm with everything we knew about the characteristics of cave dwellings in south Wales and set it to work searching for similar sites in Ireland, without us trudging blindly around the countryside, hoping to bump into something which looked promising."
What their computer model spat out was 28 potential caves in south-west Ireland which the team investigated. Eight of them were found to have cave art which they believe dates from at least 15,000 years ago and possibly much earlier, and around 5,000 years before the previous oldest example of humans in Ireland. For security the team are not disclosing the location of the caves.
The rock art which the Lost Land Bridge Project has uncovered includes engravings on the cave walls, paintings in ochre and charcoal and line sketches indented into clay and earth by fingertips. The Lost Land Bridge Project team believe the potential for more future discoveries is high. Nash goes on to say "There must be more, and even earlier places which are just waiting for us to find them. This project is now pushing the boundaries of what we consider to be the final vestiges of a north-west European frontier. It's all very exciting."
The Lost Land Bridge Project is a bold and exciting initiative; Dr. George Nash's team may have uncovered ancient cave art in south-west Ireland dating back at least 15,000 years which would push back the earliest known evidence of human presence in Ireland by around 5,000 years. It demonstrates that late Ice Age hunter-gatherers migrated into Ireland on foot via a temporary, 46-mile land bridge from modern-day Wales while following large game like mammoths and deer. Ultimately, it may redefine the understanding of early human movement across prehistoric Europe, showing that Ireland was reached far earlier than archaeologists previously believed.
Bradshaw Foundation
7 July 2026
