Holocene

11,000 BC - Today

Climate
Climate warms and glaciers melt
Geology
Seas spread over the land
Flora
Fauna
Abundant deer, rabbits, bear, waterfowl
Hominids
Native Americans

 

The Delaware Bay | 11000 BC-3000 BC

8500 BC

Because of the wide variety of stone used to make their tools, the Native American no longer needed to settle near a certain Quarry. The north people used rocky outcrops as shelter. The people further down the peninsula gathered near wooded swamps in "macroband base camps", that contained as many as twenty to thirty families. Deer, rabbits, bear and waterfowl were abundant. The stone points of this Archaic period were lighter than those made by the Paleo-Indians. They killed the animals with a stone point lashed into a wooden shaft. They also devoloped a spear throwing lever that enhanced its speed, allowing them to hunt faster game.

7000 BC

Delaware Bay was formed as a result of transgression, a geologic term, meaning the sea spreading over the land. The transgression was the result of a combination of regional crustal subsidence and eutasy (change in sea level caused by melting of glaciers and tectonic movement.

6500 BC

Estuaries could not develop because of the continued rise of the sea about 1 inch per decade. Drill cores taken dating to this period from the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays do not contain shellfish; however, there is evidence that shad and herring were already swimming up the rivers every spring to spawn.