I read a funny item in the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society of Great Britain: for forty years Ireland believed that the oldest bones of a domestic cow, dated to before…

I read a funny item in the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society of Great Britain: for forty years Ireland believed that the oldest bones of a domestic cow, dated to before 4000 BC, had been found at the Ferriter's Cove site in County Kerry, and that this was key evidence of early farming in Ireland and Britain. But quite recently someone at University College Dublin decided to check these bones afresh by collagen protein analysis and established that they belong to a bear or a wild boar. The date of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic will have to be moved forward