Prehistoric Galway
| Palaeolithic
Old Stone Age |
Mesolithic
Middle Stone Age – 8000 BC – 4000 BC |
Neolithic
New Stone Age – 4000 BC – 2500 BC |
Bronze-Age
2500 BC – 500 BC |
Iron Age
500 BC – 500 AD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early humans, the ancestors of modern humans, arrive into Britain. | The first settlers, the hunter-gatherers, arrive in Ireland. | Transition from a hunter – gatherer lifestyle to an agrarian society. | The earliest use of metal in Ireland. | The development of an iron technology in Ireland, leading up to the introduction of Christianity. |
People have always chosen to live beside rivers, lakes and the sea, as they provided sources of food and water, as well as the means to travel from one location to the next. In Galway, artefacts recovered from the River Corrib and the area surrounding Galway City indicate the presence of people as early as 6000 BC, some 2,000 years after the first humans arrived into Ireland.
