Atlantic Continental Shelf, on which the first Virginians may have hunted and camped
(look for light blue zone between the brown Blue Ridge, green Piedmont/Coastal Plain, and the dark blue deep ocean Abyssal Plain)
(Source: NOAA)
The first humans to reach Virginia arrived when sea levels were much lower, perhaps 10,000 years before the Chesapeake Bay developed. The first Virginians may have walked into the boundaries of the modern state from the north, west, or south.
We don't know for certain how Virginia was first settled. Another theory suggests some Asian hunters reached the West Coast in boats or rafts. We know the islands in the Pacific, including Hawaii, were settled by people who used some navigational technology to direct their journey by sailing or paddling, or were just lucky to find land after drifting to the islands on rafts. (While it may be true that Vikings arrived in North America before Columbus... by the time the Vikings got here, they found the continent already settled by prior immigrants.)
We do know that global warming and global cooling have caused the shape of the continents to vary, as the continental shelves and coastlines have been exposed/flooded. The Atlantic Continental Shelf east of the Coastal Plain was exposed when the ice sheets covered Canada and parts of the United States south to Pennsylvania. When the glaciers and ice caps locked up vast amounts of water, Virginia extended much further to the east. The shoreline shifted to the west during warmer climate stages when the ice melted, and the Atlantic Continental Shelf/eastern edge of the Coastal Plain of Virginia were flooded.
Right now, sea levels are rising and the land along Virginia's coast may also be sinking, due to geotectonic causes we don't fully understand. As a result, the Coastal Plain is being inundated again. Barrier islands are migrating westward. If that pattern continues over the next few centuries, Tangier Island will be completely inundated and low-lying cities such as Norfolk will have to build massive flood walls... or people will have to migrate inland.
If the Greenland ice sheet or the Antarctic ice sheets melt, then sea level could rise another 20-50 feet higher. Such a dramatic increase in sea level would force residents on the Atlantic coastline to abandon their "turf" and move to higher ground. If the Atlantic Ocean rises and "trangresses" onto the Coastal Plain, it won't be the first time that changing sea levels have altered settlement patterns in Virginia. The first Native Americans in Virginia arrived before the Ice Age ended. When river valleys flooded and the Chesapeake Bay formed, those first Virginians had to move.
Right now, the gap between Russia and Alaska is covered with water, called the Bering Strait. During the Ice Ages, however, sea level was hundreds of feet lower because so much water was trapped in glaciers, and there was a land bridge connecting the two continents. The general scientific consensus is that Asians crossed to North America and the genetic stock that settled Virginia originally was derived from the hunting groups that moved across that land bridge, walking east and south.
However and whenever they arrived, the Native Americans in Virginia were a low-tech culture compared to modern-day Virginians. In 1607 the Virginians had no airplanes, no Metrorail or Virginia Railroad Express, no Omnilink or Fairfax Connector bus, no cars. The Native Virginians who greeted the Jamestown settlers (or the Spanish who arrived 37 years earlier...) did not use the wheel, or have any horses.
To get around for about 10,000 years, the Native Americans in Virginia walked or paddled in canoes. The Native Americans in Virginia had no sailing ships, but they were using canoes routinely when the Europeans like John Cabot sailed along the North American shoreline at the end of the 15th Century.
By 1607, Powhatan's power extended across the Chesapeake Bay to the tribes on the Eastern Shore. It was physically possible to walk from "Powhatan's flu" northward, around the tip of the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore, and down to what the English labelled Cape Charles in 1607 - but Powhatan did not control much land north of the Rappahannock River. To get from Werowocomoco to the Eastern Shore part of Tsenacommacah, Powhatan's people used canoes to cross the Chesapeake Bay.
The Algonquians built those canoes with stone and bone tols, plus fire. Cutting a large standing tree with just stone tools theoretically was possible, and would have allowed the Indians to select the most desirable tree trunks - but the investment in labor would have been immense. There was a more reasonable way to find a suitable log for shaping into a canoe.
On occasion, floods brought a supply of trees to the boatmakers. The floods eliminated the hard work of cutting big trees in the forest with stone/bone tools, then somehow dragging the giant trunks to a waterway (in a culture that had no wheels for transportation). The Native Americans selected the best trunks from the intermittent flood logjams, and then converted those trunks into canoes. After all, the flood-provided trees were already cut and on the shoreline - would you go into the forest, select a tree, cut it down, and drag it to the river if there was a canoe-in-the-making already floating on the water?
The Native Americans used fire together with stone tools to excavate the excess wood and shape the tree trunk into a canoe. That would have required skill as well as patience. Making a canoe in Virginia before the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English arrived would have required a month or more of work. Those boats were manufactured with Stone Age tools, until the Europeans arrived and brought iron and steel. The Powhatans made canoes from trees, burning and scraping away the charred wood with sharp stones or shells until the trunk had been hollowed out.
hand-carved canoe at Jamestown, made by burning the wood
in the center and scraping the charred wood with bone and stone tools
(protecting the edges with mud, so they did not burn)
How do you burn a tree so it ends up as a canoe? Coals would be placed on the section of tree to be removed, charring the wood and making it easier to scrape away. But how did the canoe makers avoid burning sections of tree trunk that were not to be removed? Mud, good ol' Virginia mud. Mud was plastered on the edges of the trunk, ensuring that only the sections intended to be removed would burn. A thick layer would be slathered carefully on the edge of the tree trunk, and it would stop the fire from weakening the portion of wood that was being retained.
