Ancient 'New York City' of Canada Discovered

 

Today New York City is the Big Apple of the Northeast but new research reveals that 500 years ago, at a time when Europeans were just beginning to visit the New World, a settlement on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in Canada, was the biggest, most complex, cosmopolitan place in the region.

 

Occupied between roughly A.D. 1500 and 1530, the so-called Mantle site was settled by the Wendat (Huron). Excavations at the site, between 2003 and 2005, have uncovered its 98 longhouses, a palisade of three rows (a fence made of heavy wooden stakes and used for defense) and about 200,000 artifacts. Dozens of examples of art have been unearthed showing haunting human faces and depictions of animals, with analysis ongoing.

Re: Ancient 'New York City' of Canada Discovered

 

It's no Cahokia, but still noteworthy. As the article notes, it's also the site of the oldest European-made iron object -- believed to be a fragment of an axe -- discovered in the North American interior, almost a century before the first European explorer arrived in the region.