Legend holds that a squirrel could have swung from tree to tree from Mizen Head to Malin Head before homo sapiens arrived with their glinting axes.
For better or worse, the evolution of mankind has largely depended on our ability to reshape the landscape around us. It was Neolithic farmers from the east who introduced the first real signs of agriculture to Ireland about six thousand years ago, bringing the knowledge of the cereal farmers of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, including such innovations as the use of pack animals to carry cumbersome weights.
By the eighteenth century, Ireland boasted a strong agricultural economy. Its pastures fed the cattle and pigs that supplied the ships bound for the colonies of the British Empire while the produce of its fields was eagerly welcomed by corn merchants in England. Spearheaded by the Dublin Society, later the Royal Dublin Society, landowners across the country did much to tame the terrain to suit their agricultural needs. Between 1793 and 1815, almost a million redcoat soldiers from the British Army were engaged in near constant war with the French. Such an army required barley, lots of it, and Irish farms supplied much of this.
