~ North American History 6,000 to 3,000 BC ~

The earliest pre-history of North America, the First Peoples and the prehistoric events that shaped what would one day become the greatest nation on earth.

Intuition ~ Creativity ~ Adaptability
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Because the indigenous peoples of these regions lacked a written language, we must glean events from the admittedly very incomplete archaeological record and place them in time through radiocarbon dating techniques.
Because of the inaccuracies inherent in radiocarbon dating and in interpreting other elements of the archaeological record, most dates in this time line represent approximations that may vary a century or more from source to source. The assumptions implicit in archaeological dating methods also may yield a general bias in the dating in this time line.

Between 5,000 and 3,800 B.C. the temperature lowered again and precipitation increased so that some game returned as the climate approached what it is today. Even so the hunting cultures gradually gave way to a type in which the people were not specialized in a single skill but were versatile enough to attempt other things.

In the Eastern Woodlands there was now a "Middle Period" with great variation from area to area. Some used antlers and bones for fish-hooks, spears and harpoons, some learned to use copper for tools and ornaments. In the latter respect, a distinctive culture of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi Valley, beginning about 4,500 B.C., was the "Old Copper Culture" in which the metal was worked either in the cold or hot state, but it was never melted or cast. Knives, barbed harpoon points and atlatl weights (throwing sticks) were made in this way. There was no big game present and most of the inhabitants of the eastern societies used steatite vessels. The earliest of the Archaic Cultures is sometimes called the southern "Indian Knoll Society", with a later northern Lauretain Culture about the Great Lakes and on eastward where along the Labrador coast it eventually came face to face with Eskimos.

The western Desert Culture was oriented toward plants, collecting of small seeds and roots for food. Plant fibers were used for baskets, footwear and nets for snares.

In the southwest, the Chircahua Phase of the Cochise Culture made its appearance about 5,000 B.C. and was to last about 3,000 years. It was there that maize first appeared in the United States, sometime between 3,000 and 2,000 B.C., apparently brought up from Mexico where it had been cultivated long before. The Cochise could grow the corn because they had the soil, the right growing season and the necessary skills and tools. They could already weave baskets in which to store it and had long used grinding tools to pulverize seeds and nuts. This early desert society later gave way to the Pueblo and Mexican empires. In California the San Diego County Archeological Society recently brought suit against a land development firm, alleging that it intentionally marred a site thought to have been occupied by La Jolla Indians 3,000 to 7,000 years ago1 . Excavations on Catalina Island just off the California coast, show that man gorged himself on abalone in the 4th millennium B.C., almost wiping out the colonies

* 6000 BC: Ancestors of Penutian-speaking peoples settle in the Northwestern Plateau.
-  Nomadic hunting bands roam Subarctic Alaska following herds of caribou and other game animals.
-  Aleuts begin to arrive in the Aleutian Islands.
-  Kennewick Man dies along the shore of the Columbia River in Washington State, leaving one of the most complete early Native American skeletons.
-  Natives of the Northwestern Plateau begin to rely on salmon runs.

* 5001 BC: Early cultivation of food crops began in Mesoamerica.
-  Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest from Alaska to California develop a fishing economy, with salmon as a staple.
-  The Old Copper Culture of the Great Lakes area hammers the metal into various tools and ornaments--knives, axes, awls, bracelets, rings, and pendants.

* 5000 BC: Early cultivation of food crops began in Mesoamerica.
-  Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest from Alaska to California develop a fishing economy, with salmon as a staple.
-  Native Americans in the northern Great Lakes produce copper tools, ornaments, and utensils traded throughout the Great Plains and Ohio Valley.
-  Shell ornaments and copper items at Indian Knoll, Kentucky evidence an extensive trade system over several millennia.

* 4000 BC: Inhabitants of Mesoamerica cultivate maize (corn) while Peruvian natives cultivate beans and squash.

* 3500 BC: The largest, oldest drive site at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta, Canada.
-  Shell ornaments and copper items at Indian Knoll, Kentucky evidence an extensive trade system over several millennia.

* 3001 BC: Cultivation of the sunflower and marsh elder begins in the American South; northeastern natives cultivate amaranth and marsh elder. After harvesting these plants, the people grind their seeds into flour.
-  The Cochise people of the American Southwest begin cultivating a primitive form of maize imported from Mesoamerica; common beans and squash follow later.
-  Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest begin to exploit shellfish resources.
-  Fishing in the Northwestern Plateau increases.
-  Natives speaking the Algonquian languages arrive in eastern Canada from the south.

* 3000 BC: Shell ornaments and copper items at Indian Knoll, Kentucky evidence an extensive trade system over several millennia.

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