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Note: the information here is all gathered from The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History.
New York City is built upon very old land.
The Manhattan Schist, Fordham Gneiss, and Inwood Limestone that forms the bulk of the city’s bedrock is all dated to the pre-Cambrian era; that is, it’s as old as the Earth’s rocky crust gets.
For most of last billion years, New York was underwater. In the Mesozoic era, the Appalachians began to rise, creating the Hudson river valley, and gradually elevating Long Island and New York’s present coastline above sea level. This process accellerated during the Tertiary era, and then with the onset of the ice ages (the Laurentide glacier cut straight through Staten Island and Brooklyn at its greatest extent), glaciation left mortaines and a variety of other features.
The result of the past billion years have been the varied geology of the New York archipelago, and its excellent harbor, which was the essential ingredient to New York’s long term success in the last several hundred years.
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After crossing the Bering Sea, and a migration lasting hundreds of years, a number of Native Americans settled on the American Atlantic coast, and developed into tribes of the Algonquian linguistic family. These tribes included the Lenape (lower Hudson – “real men”), Manates (Manhattan), Canarsies (Brooklyn), Matinecooks and Rockaways (Queens), and Wecquaesgeeks (vicinity of Yonkers).
Most of these tribes were part of the Delaware confederacy, and were hunters and fishers. They also cultivated local crops such as pumpkins and maize, and would later introduce the Dutch to maple sugar and tobacco.
Interestingly, Lower Broadway (as far as Madison Square) was already a well-traveled path by the time Europeans arrived, running along the high ground from the tip of the island. Likewise, Pearl Street was named for piles of discarded oyster shells.
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With the exception of isolated contact with Scandenavian explorers who alighted with the Americas in the 8th and 11th centuries, New York suffered little European contact until Columbus discovered the continent in 1492. One of the first explorers to give attention to the northern Atlantic was Verrazano, sponsored by France. In 1524 Verrazano sailed from Virinia to Maine, making note of the narrows.
Later, in 1509, the Dutch-sponsored Hudson, who had initially hoped to find passage east to the Indies through the Arctic ocean, tried his luck to the West, choosing to explore the New York bay and upriver with more care. Although Hudson admired the harbor and recognized its potential, he turned back by the time reached Albany; relations with the native inhabbitants had become strained, and more importantly, he realized that the river would no possibly lead to further passage west.
END OF POST.