First Peoples Arrive in New York

The first peoples of New York are estimated to have arrived around 10,000 BC, with the oldest evidence of humans coming from spear points at the West Athens Hill site dated to around 10,500 BC.

When this happened

First Peoples Arrive in New York occurred in around 10,000 BC, during the pre-columbian period of American history.

Where this happened

First Peoples Arrive in New York took place in New York. Explore the full history of New York and primary source records from this era.

Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.

Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia: Prehistory.