The 9th millennium BCE in North American history provides a timeline of events occurring within the North American continent from 9000 years ago through 8001 BCE in the Gregorian calendar. Although this timeline segment may include some European or other world events that profoundly influenced later American life, it focuses on developments within Native American communities. The archaeological records supplements indigenous recorded and oral history.
Because of the inaccuracies inherent in radiocarbon dating and in interpreting other elements of the archaeological record, most dates in this timeline 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 timeline.
- 9000 BCE: Archaeological materials found on Channel Islands off the California coast
- 9000 BCE: Human settlers arrive in the Great Basin with its cool, wet prevailing climate
- 9000–8900 BCE: The Folsom culture in New Mexico leaves Bison bones and stone spear points.
- 8700 BCE: Human settlement reaches the Northwestern Plateau region.
- 8001 BC: The last glacial ends, causing sea levels to rise and flood the Beringia land bridge, closing the primary migration route from Siberia.
- 8001 BCE: Sufficient rain falls on the American Southwest to support many large mammal species--mammoth, mastodon, and a bison species-—that soon go extinct.
- 8001 BCE: Native Americans leave documented traces of their presence in every habitable corner of the Americas, including the American Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, and a cave on Prince of Wales Island in the Alexander archipelago of southeast Alaska, possibly following these game animals.
- 8001 BCE: Hunters in the American Southwest both use the atlatl.
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“At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.”
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And now what? Why, go back.
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—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
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“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
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