Amid all the talk of weather warnings, wildfires and parched earth across Europe, there was a gentle drizzle falling on the Céide Fields in north Mayo on a recent visit and the temperature was a cool 16 degrees. Hardly a scene to ponder global warming, you might think, but that would be the wrong way to look at it. The story of the Céide Fields is of considerable relevance to the current climate change crisis.

The extensive remains of this Neolithic farmed landscape prompted a reflection from the late Manchán Magan a decade ago: “The very fact that beneath the wild heathery bogs of north Mayo lies this extensive monument is both humbling and hard to grasp. The idea that we can walk in the steps of our ancestors from 5,000 years ago, following along old barley ridges where they would once have cast their seeds and knelt to weed their precious crops is a cause of wonder.”

It is indeed, but the casting of seeds and tending to valued crops also ended. While there is some divergence in assessments of archaeologists about the precise dating of the settlement and what prompted the demise of its soil and the abandonment of the land, the intensity of farming, land usages and climate change have all been considered as factors.

Met Éireann maintains a database of climate measurements that contains record values of air temperature from........

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