Boston, Massachusetts

摘要

More than twelve thousand years ago, the retreat of an ice sheet over what is now Boston exposed the land to nomadic Native American bands. Rising seas eventually transformed this hilly glacial landscape into a protected harbor of tiny islands, at the center of which was a prominent peninsula. Approximately three thousand years ago, Native groups began settling at the confluences of rivers and coastal outlets, taking advantage of newly stabilizing sea levels, stabilizing natural resources, and the development of new technologies, including ceramics and agriculture. When European explorers and colonists arrived in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries they encountered native people who called themselves the Massachusett and who referred to the peninsula as Shawmut.