New cave paintings suggest that there were human beings in Ireland 5,000 years earlier than first thought, potentially rewriting history.
It's not every day you get to see something that could rewrite Irish history firsthand, but that's the opportunity that Futureproof and Jonathan McCrea got recently.
For months the show has been following an international team of researchers who have made an exciting discovery in Co Clare: Cave art that could prove that humans were in Ireland up to 15,000 years ago, 5,000 years earlier than was previously thought.
On Sunday, September 13's Futureproof show, the researchers shared their excitement over the discovery and the impact it could have on the country's history.
Speaking in the documentary, Genevieve Von Petzinger, paleoanthropologist and rock art researcher and Project Director of the LIAACAR Project, said: "I first noticed all the blank spots on the map when I was an undergraduate student, and it has been my life's mission to see if we can start filling in the blanks.
"And I'm so excited with the possibility that Ireland might actually start to be part of the map we know.
"It's a huge, very exciting jump for the folks in Ireland. I mean, it could push things back by like 5000 years, which would be pretty cool."
View this post on Instagram
Dr George Nash, Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, added: “When I first came to do this project, the first few caves we came into it were very negative.
"When it came to this one, I saw everything I wanted to see in terms of a potential rock art tradition dating to the Upper Palaeolithic, and we've got it here.
"I'm absolutely ecstatic for what we've seen so far, and all the things I wanted to see are here.”
Dr. Barbara Oosterwijk, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Exeter, also shared: "There is no question about what we found here. It's very exciting.
"Nothing like this has ever been found in Ireland. But the question is just how old is it? Is it Mesolithic? Is it Palaeolithic or Neolithic? But either way, it's going to be exciting."
The location of this cave has not been made public due to fears of vandalism but Futureproof has been to the cave with the team.
You can listen to the podcast of this documentary here and take a look at the special fully immersive microsite that will tell you everything about this cave and its place in Irish history here.
Main image: Jonathan McCrea in the cave. Picture by: Newstalk.
