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Overview
The book moves from the earliest geological evidence of life in the Chesapeake Bay heartland-
evidence that is at least 1.3 billion years old-to 1999. Over time, this region has been home
to a fascinating diversity of natural and cultural landscapes. High mountain chains have
risen over Chesapeake lands at least twice during the past billion years.
Ocean waters and sluicing floods from melting glaciers have periodically
flowed across the area. Hunting and gathering people first came to the
region by 12,000 years ago. Native Americans began cultivating crops and
settling in towns throughout the area around 1,000 years ago.
First arriving less than 500 years ago, Europeans, and Africans
first forcibly brought by them to the region in 1619, struggled to
transform forests to farm fields during the colonial era between 1524 and 1775.
Since then, social, political, economic, and technological developments in
metallurgy, steam power, internal combustion engines, chemical engineering,
and, most recently, in electronics, have enabled people to transform regional
environments in dramatic ways.
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