Ancient Toronto before 16th Century - The History of Toronto: Toronto has only more than 300 years of development as a city. From primitive men to crude fishing village, then to the arrival of French in 17th Century, finally to the biggest city in Canada. Toronto’s developing speed is amazing. Today ResearchVit will introduce you the ancient part of Toronto’s history.

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Ancient Toronto before 16th
Century
- The History of Toronto
A
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After the Ice Age
2
After the Ice Age
Toronto has only more than 300 years of development as a city. From primitive men to crude
fishing village, then to the arrival of French in 17th Century, finally to the biggest city in Canada.
Toronto’s developing speed is amazing.
Today ResearchVit will introduce you the ancient part of Toronto’s history.
13,000 years ago, the one-km-thick glaciers of the last ice age melted northwards from southern
Ontario, left behind large meltwater lakes. Geologists call one of those bodies of water ‘Lake
Iroquois‘, which is much larger than Lake Ontario - Its water level was 40 metres higher than
today's lake, which means the current downtown Toronto was once underwater.
Around 11,700 years ago, Lake Iroquois found St Lawrence as a new outlet to the Atlantic
Ocean. That caused the lake to drain 100 metres below today's Lake Ontario 11,400 years ago,
and makes its shoreline far to the south of the current one.

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Ancient Toronto
3
Ancient Toronto
Around 10,500-11,000 years
ago, a small number of people
moved into the cold sub-arctic
landscape of ancient Ontario
from the south. The shoreline
of ancient Lake Ontario lying
about 20 kms south of modern
Toronto.
These early inhabitants fished and gathered but relied mainly on hunting caribou, as well
as mammoths, mastodons, and smaller animals in a region of tundra and boreal forest. They
travelled across large distances in families to sustain themselves.

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Evolving Societies
4
Evolving Societies
(BC 6,000 – AD 600)
About 8,000 years ago, the climate
warmed to similar to modern levels, new
plants evolved in southern Ontario.
Indigenous people discovered a convenient shortcut between Lake Ontario in the south and
Georgian Bay in the north. Later known as the ‘Toronto Passage’, the main branches of this
route expands to a large area.
People expanded the range of foodstuffs as the climate and environment evolved, with fishing
in particular growing in importance. Over the millennia, these indigenous societies grew in
complexity. Related families began to congregate in large spring and summer camps near the
mouths of rivers to catch fish, trade, and engage in communal social and spiritual events
around 3,000 years ago. The population also rose through the centuries, to roughly 10,000 in
southern Ontario by about 1,500 years ago, with possibly 500 people living along each of the
major rivers in the Toronto area.
There are similarities in many of the excavated sites across the lower Great Lakes and by the
presence of trade goods from far away, such as copper mined near Lake Superior and marine
shell objects from today's southern United States.
↓Axe/Arrow heads(BC
1,000)

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Iroquoian Cultures
5
Iroquoian Cultures
(AD 600 – 1600)
Beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco were introduced into Ontario from the south. As
an important new corps, corn arrived roughly 1,400 years ago, became increasingly
important in people's diets. The move towards farming helped shaping the horticultural
Iroquoian societies that developed about 1,100 years ago in the lower Great Lakes.
↑Ceramic Pot and Bird Effigy (AD 1,300)
Iroquoian Pipe (AD 1,500) →
An important shift showed that people
slowly abandoned much of the mobility. In its
place semi-permanent villages developed,
people moved out during parts of the year to
hunt, fish, gather, or otherwise meet their
subsistence needs as supplements to the
farming that lay at the heart of their work.
Iroquoian villages typically lasted from 10 to 20 years
before their inhabitants relocated to new sites when the
longhouses deteriorated. The old settlements served as
meadowlands and thinly forested environments.

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European Goods
6
European Goods
(16th Century)
In 1534, the French sailor Jacques Cartier journeyed up the St Lawrence River as far as
modern Montreal. Cartier's journey was the first well-documented record of European activity
on the edge of the Great Lakes region. However, his memoirs clearly indicated that the
aboriginal people he met on the St Lawrence had encountered whites previously, had traded
furs for foreign goods, and had stored pelts in anticipation of future contacts.
In 14th to 16th centuries, the Iroquoians in
Toronto and surrounding areas slowly moved
north to the Georgian Bay to join the
developing Huron confederacy. The new
Huron confederacy used the now-uninhabited
Toronto as part of their territory.
↑Native territories in 1600
Please keep an eye in Modern Toronto after 16th Century next week.

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Research Reference:
1. “First Peoples, 9000 BCE to 1600 CE”, City
of Toronto;
2. “History of Toronto”, Lonely Planet;
3. “Images From Our Archives”, Toronto
Historical Association;
4. “History of Toronto”, Wikipedia.
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