Oughterard’s earliest settlers – going back 7,000 years

by Bill Daly

It’s a village with a proud history, but even the most learned of historians wouldn’t anticipate that the story of Oughterard goes back almost 7,000 years… way back before the beginnings of written history – into prehistory and the realm of archaeologists.

The village’s ancient history was established after microliths (small stone tools) which were found in 1975 at River Island, where the Owenriff River flows into Lough Corrib.

That allows Oughterard to claim a pedigree to be amongst a very small number of places in Ireland where the first settlers to this country came to live and build their homes, almost 7,000 years ago.

Mesolithic Oughterard is the theme of a presentation that I will deliver on Friday week, April 27, at the Oughterard Courthouse at 8pm, hosted by The Oughterard Heritage Group.

We will look at the geology and landscape the first settlers came into, and also their culture and lifestyle.

However, it will not just be a presentation, because we will be bringing it to life by also presenting physical reconstructions of a Mesolithic house, tools, weapons and artifacts.

To put this into context it is 12,000 years to the end of the last Ice Age. The era between the retreat of the ice and the development of farming is called the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age.

This phase – the one we’re looking at on Friday week – lasted from 8,000BC to 4,000BC, which is over 40% of our recorded time on this Island.

Ireland at that time was completely different than it is now and everywhere was covered in a thick canopy of trees.

The new settlers could move more easily on rivers and lakes, and sought out these places for their refuge. A good supply of water was very important, for drinking purposes and also to attract wild game.

They were the last of the hunter-gatherer people, before humans were to become involved in farming (Neolithic) or metal-working (Bronze Age), but they were also very creative and inventive.

And because they did not grow any crops, or have the ability to store their produce, they had to become very skilled at hunting and fishing.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.