New Jersey - Ancient Heritage

Research for my novel, Manhattan Legacy, was a long and involved process during which I discovered so much about the beginnings of the United States of America in the 17th century. It took me on a fascinating journey and shook up a lot of my previously ignorant notions of America.
New Jersey is one such surprise. Far from being a place of rich housewives, Italians, Jersey Shore tourists and a strong accent, this State has an ancient history as rich and as fascinating as any in the world. An incredible heritage.

During the Jurassic Period, some 180 million years ago, New Jersey abutted North Africa. The Appalachian Mountains were a result of this head-on collision. Glaciers that formed during the Ice Age retreated to give rise to numerous swamps, rivers and gorges, including Glacial Lake Passaic formed from the melting waters of the Wisconsin Glacier and Glacial Lake Hackensack.

Around 10,000 years ago, the original peoples of America were feisty Paleo-Indians, survivors of inhospitable terrain and harsh weather. The Lenni Lenape, immigrants from the Mississippi Valley, were nomadic, big-game hunters, tracking wooly mammoths, giant sloths, sabre-toothed tigers and six-foot tall beavers across the icy wastelands of New Jersey an area called Scheyichbi by the Lenape. As the climate continued to become warmer, these prehistoric animals disappeared and, in their stead, was easier prey like white-tailed deer, raccoon and bear. The Lenape fished along the shoreline of New York Harbour using nets and fish hooks to collect clams, mussels and oysters and sea fish.

The Lenape of this region gradually became known as the Delaware. Their stone tools became more efficient and, with the advent of the bow and arrow, they began to settle in places for longer, built oval, bark-shingled houses and practised small-scale agriculture. They grew squashes, beans, maize and tobacco and gathered nuts such as walnuts, chestnuts and beechnuts.

With venison, oysters, clams, corn, sweet potatoes and walnuts on the menu, their diet would be the envy of some of today's more discerning diners.

By the time the first European explorers arrived in the 16th century there were 8,000 to 20,000 Delaware living in parts of Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Life was to change dramatically for New Jersey's Delaware natives when Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed along the New Jersey coastline in 1524.

It's an extraordinary thing to realise that, far from being a 'newly-established' country, the USA is home to one of the world's oldest peoples.

The European Invasion! Read part two in my next blog.

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