The history of people in this part of our country goes back a lot farther into the distant, foggy past than we might realize. While it is true that the history of the white European breeds of humans has only dwelled in this neighbourhhod since the early 1800s, there had been multitudes of people occupying this fertile area for a long, long time before that.

Since they had no way of recording their history, we have to put the pieces of the ancient puzzle together through the expertise of archeology. Fortunately many of their everyday tools were made of hard stone which is relatively unchanged over their history of thousands of years in the ground. Evidence shows that many of them earned their living right here where we live today.

Life must have been difficult for the first humans who managed to establish a foothold on the high ground here, as the thick ice slowly receded after the last ice age. Ten or 12,000 years ago, a thick ice cap covered our part of North America as far south as New York. Even as the ice began to melt, it must have been a pretty chilly place for the primitive campers.

The melting ice filled all our low land with a gigantic body of water which we know as Lake Algonquin, so the most ancient artifacts are found only on the high ground. Some discoveries have been made on hilltops which used to be islands where hunting camps were established. Some of these are close to present-day Alliston.

Obviously, humans did not always occupy this continent so the first questions are, who were they, where did they come from, how did they get here and why did they come here?

Historians believe that the first Canadians were hunters in Asia who came across the ice at the top of the world, while following big game.

The tribe would not know that they had immigrated into North America when they began to move down from the place that we know as Alaska. Of course it may have taken the lives of many generations of hunters to arrive at this part of the continent.

The first Canadians (which we know as the Paleo People) had only their primitive, stone tools with which to fight for survival, taking their place among some very dangerous, giant animals. Near Loretto, Ont., just a few miles from Alliston, the bones of several great mastodons were unearthed. At one site, a single animal was found and at another site, a female and baby were found. These great beasts were like huge wooly elephants with enormous curving tusks and if a tribe could possibly kill one and defend the meat from the giant bears and cats, there would be enough meat for as long as it could be preserved. They would also make use of the hides and tusks and giant bones.

Nobody knows much about the hunting methods of these cunning men except that they were successful and tough enough to survive and multiply. No doubt, they had fire which terrified the beasts and they may have devised clever ways to use this tool to their advantage.

We know that they used bows and arrows as well as spears (javelins) with sharp stone points and axes too. I have found a few of them in my years of farming around this area. Experts have identified them as approximately 10,000-year-old artifacts. They are beautifully made, by chipping them out with a piece of deer antler and a hammer stone. They were very skilled with their hands.

Eventually, with the passage of time, our first folk were replaced by a new human, the man of the Late Archaic Period, who appeared on the scene about 5,000 years B.C. They were very hardy and determined to survive too. Apparently, many of the gigantic animals had become extinct by that time. This type of human would occupy our neighbourhood for a long time too and they left me a collection of perfect stone arrowheads and javelin points and polished stone adze heads.

Mankind is constantly learning and developing and changing and the neighbourhood gang eventually became the Early Woodland People. By that time, the housewife was using very nice pottery to contain the things she wanted to keep and she had certain utensils for her work of cooking and preserving foods. The quality of the men's tools improved too as they sought better ways of killing animals and sometimes, even their fellow man. These natives, in their time on the earth, lived more or less where we live today.

In the modern era (only 2,000 years ago) the Huron people showed on the scene and being the largest group, numbering about 35,000 souls at one point, they occupied a much larger general area of land. They had a little more in common with the white man who was to follow. They cleared some land to build villages in good locations with a good source of water, and good soil because they were farmers as well as hunters and fishermen.

These modern folk devised ways of trapping and netting tons of fish that came up the rivers in those days. Of course, they preserved a lot over smoky fires but they also used a lot for fertilizer in their corn fields. With every hill of corn they buried fish and sometimes ashes or powdered bark with several seeds. When the white man arrived he marveled at their great crops, not only of corn but also beans and squash, pumpkins, sunflowers and tobacco. The people maintained their fields with very primitive tools.

These Huron people built longhouses which were roofed with sheets of bark, strong enough to withstand the winter storms. Several families lived in each one which was usually about 15 or 20 feet wide and varied in length, with raised bunks along each side and having at least one fire pit in the centre. Early white men reported that they found the smoke unbearable in winter but the natives were accustomed to it.

The people were pretty organized in their lifestyle. Everything was shared and the chief was likely to be the wisest man in town. Their moccasins made of tanned hides were excellent as were their deerskin clothes.

The men were hunters and warriors and they enjoyed sports and gambling. Lacrosse games could become violent. I found two of their perfectly round game balls, the size of golf balls. If a gambler had nothing to bet, he might bet the end joint of his little finger which would be cut off with a sharp blow from a stone tool but if the winner insisted, the loser often escaped into the woods.

The native people never had the wheel, the written word, or many of the advantages that the Europeans had and they could not build roads so they made lakes and rivers their highways. They developed the most wonderful, lightweight bark canoes. Some natives must have had the instincts of travelling salesmen because some artifacts found here have come from far down in the southern U.S. Old stories tell of canoe trips all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. What strong paddlers they were.

Even the most primitive humans all over the world seemed to know that the world did not create itself and that man had some kind of spiritual father who created everything that exists.

In their own way, the natives held spiritual events and prayed. They knew that at the end of their lives there must be some kind of heaven where man could spend eternity.

The early explorers brought missionaries to convert the primitive man to Christianity. Sometimes there was a great response and many believed. There were some great missionaries in the old days who were a blessing to the natives but as we recognize today, some bad mistakes were made in trying to change their culture and all too often whole villages were wiped out by the new diseases they brought to these healthy natives.

Today there are some great missionaries and clergy from among their own people. They are teaching that all men are so evil that God sent his own Son, Jesus Christ to show man the New Covenant between man and God and that for those who believe and turn from sin, Jesus has paid the penalty for our sins by way of His death on the cross.

Today, many believe but many more do not. In some ways the new owners of the land are very different people and yet, in some ways, we are all the samem, but over the last thousands of years of local history, that's the way they were then.

For more local history see next Tuesday's edition of the Alliston Herald. The stories from 2008 are being printed into Book 1 next week and should be available by mid-January.