History seen through a Native Plant, Animal, & Peoples’ Lens
Oregon’s history begins long before our next Lesson Series of the Distant Past (~15,000 years ago) that honors the first native Indigenous Peoples, totally dependent on native plants and animals for food and medicine. Some early Stone Age peoples may have sailed here, but most walked or paddled the shoreline to the Americas to be followed 14,750 years later by Hawaiians, Chinese, English, Scotts, Russians, Spanish, and French Canadians who brought iron, the horse, wheels, and the concept of land property rights to the Columbia River and
Oregon Coast … and diseases created by European agriculture and livestock. 30,000 years before, all our ancestors were Stone Age and totaled ~10,000 after a volcanic Extinction Event that covered the planet in ash. (And it was 3,000 years ago that the Copper Age replaced the Stone Age in the Mediterranean.) Today numbering 8,000,000,000, Homo sapiens have only recently learned we share 98+% DNA of the chimpanzee. In 1964, human cell’s mitochondrial DNA was discovered and provides a 2nd proof, as we have a common grandmother, an African Eve. Humans show very little DNA variance. We are all brothers and sisters.
This is the first of 10 Series, each designed for 5 hours of research, reference, and reflection. This first Series is the shortest even though it represents 4.5 billion years before hominids first appeared on Earth 7 million years ago … with Homo sapiens appearing but ~150,000 years ago … but that was in Africa, later Europe and Asia. There was no “People’s Lens” in the Americas. Left untouched by human hands, North and South America developed an astounding number of large animal species, but most (mammoths, mastodons, etc.) disappeared 10,000 years ago after meeting the new weapons and killing pits. Homo sapiens kill with abandon; we even kill each other creating the 1st of 10 Rocky Mountain Floristic Region’s extinction challenge to be studied: war and proxy wars. And remembering:
“The first casualty of war is always truth.”
Begin each course by answering a question to advance from page to page. The last page of a Series is the Record of Completion, when printed, collected, and combined with the other 9 lesson series, these records are intended to represent proof of 50 hours of state (or province) course history completion for homeschoolers.
We start each Lesson Series with the “official” flora, fauna, or symbol of a state or province; for Oregon: the Tall Oregon Grape, Western Meadowlark, Beaver, Grey Whales, Douglas Fir, Chinook Salmon, Tobacco, Mount Hood, Oregon Swallowtail, and Bald Eagle.
The official State Flower of Oregon is the:
Reproducible Worksheet
Color or Paint this State Flower
Answers to each page’s question (that allows one to advance to the next page) are found in the prose (above), photos, or in the URLs and references cited.