Prehistory

What is history? How far back does it go? Usually, we say that history begins when we have written records made by people who lived in the past. But people lived without writing for thousands of years. The part of time that came before people wrote anything down is called "prehistory."

The first people probably came to central and southern Labrador about 9000 years ago. That was thousands of years before the great pyramids were built in Egypt—thousands of years before the time of the Old Testament in the Bible. Around the same time the first people arrived in Labrador, farming people in the Middle East were just beginning to make the very first towns in the world.

We have no written records of the early native peoples who came to Newfoundland and Labrador. They belong to prehistoric times. Who were these first people? They are probably not the ancestors of the native people who live here today.

Over long periods of time, many bands of people came to Newfoundland and Labrador. We know these people belonged to different groups because the tools they left behind are not the same. Tools found in some places are not the same as tools found in other places. They were made out of different materials. They were not made in the same ways. They were used to do different things. This shows that these tools were made by people who were not related and did not meet or trade very much. At times in the past, some groups of people died out. Was this because a new group of people moved in and took over? Did they starve to death or die of some sickness? We do not know.

Archaeologists are people who try to find the answers to these questions. They do this by digging in places where prehistoric people lived. Every year, archaeologists learn more by digging carefully through very old sites where these early people lived and were buried. The archaeologists find arrow heads and harpoon tips, fireplaces and the bones of the animals that people ate. All this helps them to understand the past.