"People have lived on the outer part of the hook of land that forms Cape Cod for thousands of years. Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket were formed as massive terminal moraines at the end of the last glacial period in North America about 15,000 years ago. Ancient artifacts, such as Paleoindian projectile points found at several locations on Cape Cod indicate that humans have occupied this land, or at least traversed it for the last 10,000 years... In his travel narrative about the region, Cape Cod, Henry David Thoreau observed that Cape Cod was once 'thickly settled' by Indians and that traces of their occupation, in the form of 'arrow-heads,' and piles of shell, ashes, and deer bones, could be seen around the marsh edges and inlets throughout the Cape. More systematic and concerted archeological studies on the outer Cape by National Park Service archeologists in the 1980s showed concentrations of ancient villages and activities around Nauset Harbor and Wellfleet Harbor..." -Francis P. McManamon, National Park Service.
