The area that would become Parc le Breos has been inhabited by modern humans since the earliest times. The Cathole Cave – a steep, limestone outcrop, about from the floor of a dry narrow limestone gorge, now known as the Parc le Breos Cwm valley – has been used as a shelter by bands of Mesolithic hunters and as a Neolithic ossuary. The cave is a deep triangular fissure penetrating the hillside and narrowing towards the top. It has two entrances, with a natural platform outside the larger of the two. Excavations revealed two tanged points that may date to c. 28,000 years before present (BP), an interglacial period during the Late Pleistocene. Late glacial tool finds from the Upper Palaeolithic date to c. 12,000 BP. Animal remains were found at the same level as the Upper Palaeolithic tools, providing evidence of the climate c. 12,000 BP: red fox; Arctic fox; brown bear; tundra vole; and possibly reindeer. Animal remains excavated at the cave during the nineteenth century include mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, red deer and giant deer, which are yet to be accurately dated. Several finds date to the Bronze Age: a bronze socketed axe; two human skeletons; and sherds of pottery, from burial urns and other vessels.
