The Impact of World and Canadian History on North Middlesex before 1600
Please Note: Most of the content of this time line was derived from secondary sources.
There may be inaccuracies.
About 398 to 385 million years ago - In the middle Devonian period,
North Middlesex was covered with a sea, warm enough to support corals and shelled
animals which looked a bit like small clams, called brachiopods. During this period,
sediment settled to the bottom of the sea forming the layered sedimentary bedrock
beneath our feet. In most of North Middlesex this bedrock is far below the surface
covered with deposits from later glaciers. Near Hungry Hollow, the Ausable river
has cut through the deposits and younger rock to expose the layers of bedrock which
contain fossils of the life which grew in the sea. Fossil hunters come from all
over the world as this is a major site for finding middle Devonian fossils, and
geologists study the exposed layers of rock to learn how sedimentary rock is formed.
A drive across the Hungry Hollow bridge will often find groups of people sorting
through the rocks on the river banks below.
About 22,000 BC - Humans migrate across the "Bering Land Bridge" from Asia to North America and begin moving southward along the Pacific coast and
along planes east of the Rocky Mountains eventually to spread out over North American
below the southern limits of the ice age and eventually to reach the tip of South
America.
About 11,000 BC - The kilometres thick ice of the last ice age
retreats from Southwestern Ontario leaving features such as moraines, ancient lake
beaches, glacial river valleys, and stones which were carried from great distances
by the ice and deposited as the ice melted. For more than 150 years, many
area
farmers have been picking glacier stones out of their fields, and the pioneers
invented the horse drawn "stone boat", a type of skid, to carry them away. Glacier
created features define
the landscape of North Middlesex to the present day.
About 10,000 BC - Palaeo-Indians, the earliest prehistoric people
to populate Ontario, started moving north through Michigan into Ontario as the land
became ice free, a land which probably looked more like northern tundra than
the lush maple, oak, beech and pine forests which the first European settlers saw
when they arrived. There is an important Paleo-Indian archeological site in McGillivray
township just north of Parkhill which has yielded many flint arrow heads or 'points'.
These early people were few in number but spread
over an area of Southwestern Ontario as far north as Georgian bay. The group
of sites in Ontario is called "the Parkhill Complex" indicating the importance of
the Parkhill site to the study of these people.
80 AD - The Roman Coliseum was completed.
1001 AD - Leif Erikson and a group of Vikings from Iceland became the first Europeans
to settle in North America at L'Ans aux Meadows, Newfoundland. There is evidence
to suggest that they remained at the settlement for six or seven years before returning
to Greenland and Iceland.
1492 - Christopher Columbus landed in North America.