The nation's earliest written history relates to events that occurred in Florida. Despite this, many perceive Florida to be a young state. While many of Florida's present-day communities developed in the 20th century, these major phases of rapid growth give Florida a legacy that sometimes belies its rich archaeology and history that spans many centuries.
...there is a perception that everything in Florida is "new" [and] therefore not worth preserving.
—Comment from survey
People have lived in Florida more than 12,000 years. From the earliest Paleoindian hunters at the end of the last ice age to the powerful chiefdoms encountered by Spanish explorers, Florida's first inhabitants were Native Americans. Adapting to changing climates and widely varying environments, Florida Indians spread to every part of the peninsula. Along the coasts and the St. Johns River, shellfish constituted an important resource. Huge mounds of shell still attest to the presence of pre-European villages and towns. On the richer soils in the Florida panhandle, farming people grew corn, beans and squash, and settled villages. About 1,000 years ago, the well-known Mississippian chiefdoms began to construct large pyramids of earth, some more than 40 feet high, organized in regular patterns around a central plaza. The Apalachee, the Timucua, the Tocobaga, and the Calusa ranked among the largest and most powerful chiefdoms encountered by European explorers of Florida's peninsula. From initial European contact in the early 1500s, in less than 200 years these great native societies were virtually extinct, victims of disease, warfare, and slavery. The Florida landscape is rich with remains of their mounds, canals, plazas, villages, and other sites. These sites are often the only source of information on what Florida was like thousands of years ago and deserve stewardship and protection in the 21st century.
