Aboriginal Timeline 1

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19 November 2010

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Aboriginal Timeline 1

Creation story to 2000 BCE

There are many First Nations stories about how the Earth was created and how humans came to inhabit it. Each nation and tribe has its own story that has been passed down from generation to generation in an oral tradition.

Most of these creation beliefs involve a Great Spirit that has power over all things. The Great Spirit is personal, close to the people. The people see themselves as part of the world the Great Spirit created.

Creation Story Continues

In Aboriginal spirituality, the creation story is circular and continuing. People are parts of a world that is born, dies, and is reborn in the observable cycle of days and seasons, they too are part of a natural order.

Creation is explained in the Earth Diver story, in which either the Great Spirit or the Transformer dives or orders other animals to dive into the primeval water to bring up mud, out of which he fashions the Earth; this belief is held by Indians of the Eastern Woodlands and Northern Plains.

The Trickster creation story frequently but not always represents the Transformer as a comical character. This spirit steals light, fire, water, food, animals, or even mankind and loses them or sets them loose to create the world. This explanation is heard among West Coast and some Prairie tribes.

Among the Micmac and Abenaki of the East Coast, the Transformer appears as a human being with supernatural powers who brings the world into its present form by heroic feats.

Across the Great Plains, there are said to be two Transformers. They compete with each other in feats of strength, ability, or cunning. The result of this contest is the formation of the world as it now exists.

The Great Spirit speaks through certain humans (shamans) to give them spiritual laws they must obey.

75,000 BCE (Approx.)

Beringia (the Bering Land Bridge) exists.

50,000 to 30,000 BCE (Approx.)

First humans arrive in North America (this date is debated among scholars and may be anywhere between 50,000 BCE and 15,000 BCE). There are some who believe Aboriginal People were always here in the Americas.

30,000 BCE

In 1961, a child's skull is discovered near Taber, Alberta. Some experts dated it as 32,000 years old. Later, more sophisticated, analysis suggests it was more likely 4,000 years old. It is one of many discoveries that have overturned widely believed theories that have ended up being false trails.

24,500-10,000 BCE

Humans live at Bluefish Caves in the northern Yukon. In 1985, a large mammoth bone was discovered at the site. Flakes had been taken from the bone to make tools. The bone was dated at 24,500 years old, making Bluefish Caves among the oldest finds of humans in North America.

19,000-13,000 BCE

In 1999, two Smithsonian archaeologists put forward a controversial theory. They suggest that the Clovis people (see below) could have inherited technology from the Solutrean people who lived in southern Europe. This “Sultrean hypothesis” says people could have migrated along the edge of pack ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that then extended to the Atlantic coast of France.

12,000 BCE

Beringia exists again.

9200 - 8500 BCE

Fluted points (arrowheads) spread across Canada. In 1932, a site was excavated near Clovis, New Mexico. Distinctive fluted spear points (left) made out of flint were found and dated to about 13,000 years ago. Many archaeologists believe Clovis Culture marks the start of human habitation in the Americas.

U.S. Dept of Agriculture

9000 BCE

Native People living throughout North and South America. North of Lake Ontario the people are hunting caribou, grizzly bears, Arctic fox, and mammoths.

8500 BCE

Clovis Culture starts to be replaced by the slightly more advanced Folsom Culture, which developed better hunting weapons and tools.

8000 BCE

Quartzite and flint is quarried on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Obsidian quarry begun at Edziza, B.C.

The Haida have been living on the Queen Charlotte Islands since about this time. At its peak the Haida nation had a population of about 30,000; by 1915 this had dwindled to 600.

7000 BCE

Athabaskan (Na-Dene) people arrive in Alaska and the Yukon.

6250 BCE

Canada's earliest human skeleton found at Gore Creek, B.C. is dated to 6250 BC.

6000 BCE

The first people to have settled in Newfoundland are believed to have arrived around this time.

5500 BCE

An ancient culture (so-called Red Paint People because they painted themselves that colour) left behind evidence along the North Atlantic coast including L'Anse Amour, Labrador.

4000 BCE

Trade routes extend across all of eastern Canada.

Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo-Jump in Alberta is first used to kill large numbers of buffalo by herding them over a 10-metre-high cliff to hunters waiting below.

3000 BCE

Native techniques for catching and curing the vast salmon runs of the West coast have led to the development of larger and more complex communities.

Old Copper peoples living on the shores of Lake Superior fashion tools out of copper.

The Oxbow people have settled in the Southern Prairies. They are believed to have come from the southwest and have trading networks stretching from the West coast to the Great Lakes.

3000 BCE

At about this time, medicine wheels begin to appear, especially in Alberta. Tens of thousands of these stone circles were built. They were used in religious ceremonies, for teaching, and for astronomy.

2000 BCE

First people arrive in the Canadian Arctic. They are known as the Pre-Dorset Culture and may have crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia. They lived by hunting seals, caribou, and musk oxen, and learned to survive in one of the world's harshest climates.

Go to Aboriginal Timeline - Part 2

“We Hopi believe that the

human race has passed through three different worlds and life ways since the beginning. At the end of each prior world, human life has been purified or punished by the Great Spirit “Massauu” due mainly to corruption, greed, and turning away from the Great Spirit’s teachings.”

Chief Dan Evehema, from his message to all humans

Creation Stories

“80,000 BCE Twenty-five bone fragments believed altered by man are discovered in Old Crow. Many scientists are sceptical. Early man is however learning to cope with northern climates by producing fire at will, fabricating tents and winter clothing.”

Wolflodge.org

BERING LAND BRIDGE

At certain periods during the Pleistocene Period (from 2.5 million years ago up to 10,000 years ago), the temperatures turned cold enough to freeze much of the Earth’s water into ice.

The sea level dropped as much as 90 m and the shallow Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia became a natural land bridge called Beringia on which grazing animals, and the humans that stalked them, passed.

Most anthropologists believe that North and South American Indians descend from Asian peoples who moved onto our continent by way of this land bridge.

However, others suggest migrations may have gone the other way, from the Americas to Asia and then back again. This theory says people moved as ice ages came and went. As the sea level rose and fell the land bridge would appear and disappear.

“PaleoIndians might have been like pre-industrial humans elsewhere. In the Pacific, for example, Native People exterminated numerous species of birds before Europeans arrived. In Hawaii, they cleared land with fire, introduced animals, diverted streams for irrigation, and transformed forested coastal areas into farms and grasslands, and mudflats into fishponds.”

Shepard Krech III, Professor of Anthropology, National Humanities Center

FOLLOW THE ICE

The first humans in North America - called PaleoIndians - migrated south along the West coast thus avoiding the ice which covered much of the continent. As the Ice Age declined, the PaleoIndians then migrated north following the receding glaciers. So, Canada’s first migrants came here - between 9000 and 8000 BCE - from the south.