Page 5 - lake-city-florida-a-sesquicentennial-tribute-(h-morris-williams-kevin-mccarthy)-2009

Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy

Chapter One: Before the 16th Century

Chapter One: Before the 16 Century
th

The Florida
peninsula
used to look
a lot different
than it does

these days.
Thousands of
years ago,
when the
earth was
Huge mammoths used to roam
the Florida peninsula. much colder
and glaciers
covered the top half of the present-day United States and in fact much
of the world’s water was frozen in glaciers, the oceans were much
lower than they are today.

In fact, they were as much as 350 feet lower so that land
masses, for example at the Bering Strait west of present-day Alaska,

were joined. Hunters made their way across such land bridges looking
for animals like the giant mastodon and mammoth. Those hunters spread
out over North America and eventually settled down to fish and hunt
and raise crops.

Archaeologists tell us that around 12,000 years ago some of
the wanderers reached Florida in what is known as the Paleoindian
Period. At that time Florida may have been twice as large as it is
today because of the much lower level of the oceans. The settlements
of Native Americans along the coasts will probably never be found
because they have long been under the sea. 1

1

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