Fire and ice forged the physical setting of California's storied past. No matter how extensively humans have altered that setting with mining activities, transportation systems, aqueducts, and various other built structures, nature always has been integral to the state's history. Before there was a human record there was pre-history, or a time of beginnings, by far the longest period in California's timeline. During this genesis California literally rose from the Pacific, at times spewing flames and volcanic ash. Violent thrusts from below the Earth's surface formed mountains and valleys that later would be carved by huge rivers of ice. Before these glaciers began melting, some 15,000 years ago, America's first human inhabitants began making their way by foot and watercraft from Asia to North America. On reaching the New World, these mammoth-hunting migrants trekked southward and eastward, some settling in what would become California. Their seagoing Asian counterparts navigated North America's coastline southward to the Channel Islands and mainland. These trekking and sailing Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, peoples were the first human occupants of this remarkable land. Some scholars speculate that Polynesian and Chinese Pacific voyagers visited Indian California centuries before Europeans arrived in the province.
Pacific Eldorado: A History of Greater California, First Edition. Thomas J. Osborne. © 2013 Thomas J. Osborne. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Timeline
30 million years ago
13.000 years ago
10.000 to 15,000 years ago
11.000 years ago 4,600 years ago
2.000 years ago 1000 CE 400-800 1500s
Late 1700s
California’s land mass was formed by Pacific geological processes, especially through plate tectonic subductions and lateral movements
Following the “Kelp Highway,” Asian Pacific voyagers arrive in the Channel Islands, perhaps becoming the first Californians, according to archeologist Jon M. Erlandson and others
As climate warming set in and Beringia melted into the Bering Strait, the descendants of Paleo-Indian migratory hunters continue on their way eastward and southward throughout the New World in pursuit of game
The skeletal remains of the so-called Arlington Woman are found at a site on Santa Rosa Island along California’s coast
A bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), located in California’s White Mountains and dating back more than four millennia, is thought to be the oldest living thing on Earth
Some of today’s California redwood trees, the world’s largest living things, date to the time of Jesus of Nazareth and the Roman Empire
Chumash Indians build a seafaring culture in and around today’s Santa Barbara and on a few of the Channel Islands
Early Polynesians may have reached California in watercraft, according to a small group of anthropologists and linguists
Specialists estimate that 15,000 Chumash lived in California at the time of European contact
Between 300,000 and 1,000,000 indigenous people inhabited California most of them living in villages of 100 to 500 dwellers
World History
