At https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bone-analysis-held-theory-farming.html … around 30 years ago the discovery of animal remains at a small cove on the Dingle peninsular in Co. Kerry seemed to show that domesticated cattle had turned up in Ireland during the Mesolithic period, her defined as between 8000 and 4000BC. This discovery has coloured Irish archaeology for a generation but the bones were only identified by eyeball. A new analysis of them at UCD school of archaeology, using modern and up to date methodology, has discovered the bone come from a wild boar and a bear. Not cattle. Basically, this means farming didn’t arrive in Ireland earlier than it did in Britain, a short sail away, around 4000BC. At this time there were a lot of people on the move in western Europe and Neolithic settlement occurred across Britain from England to Wales and Scotland – even to the outer isles. It is much mor4e likely that they reached Ireland around the same time as a result of the same migratory movements – whether from the northern European plain or from France and Iberia by sea. Indeed, the old idea that some Neolithic traits arrived in the Mesolithic smacks of the discovery of what was identified as bread remains in the Solent around 8000BC. That turned out to be misidentification too. However, the bones will now become of interest to non archaeologists. Biologists will be eager to identify which species of bear was living in Ireland in the Mesolithic.
At https://phys.org/news/2026-08-archaeologists-uncover-rare-arrowheads-tepecik.html … this story revolves around the discovery of well worked and incised arrowheads in central Anatolia that date back 9000 years ago – roughly 7000BC. Now, archaeologists have discovered the same type of arrowhead in Cappadocia. The site is littered with obsidian arrowheads and their scraps but it also includes examples of incised arrowheads reminiscent of the earlier finds. The actual purpose of the incisions or marks is unknown and somewhat puzzling. It may simply have been decorative or the incisions had a symbolical meaning we cannot grasp. It might be more understandable if a precise date was known – but at the moment they appear to have been found in a deposit that accumulated over a lengthy period of time of occupation at the site.