When the Gilgamesh epic's clay tablets were drying in the sun, the first Egyptian pyramids were being built (4,500 years ago), and the first Ohlone (or Water People) buried the first generation of their ancestors on the west coast of Turtle Island (what was later labeled America), the Ohlone shell mounds were begun.
When King Solomon's Temple was built the shell mounds were still in use, and the people of Mt. Shasta traded with the Ohlone, the Sacramento River connecting the communities. When Caesar took the reins of power in the Roman Empire, and fought this poverty skolah's Celtic ancestors (and the son of a carpenter, known as Jesus, started getting famous), the shell mound had grown to two acres in diameter.
When Constantine was Emperor in Rome, rewriting the Christian Bible, the Ohlone traded with everyone who called the Pacific Coast home. When Rome fell to the Visigoths, Glen Cove/Sogorea Te was still going strong. William the Conquerer forced my ancestors to learn some French. The Vikings visited Turtle Island, unsuccessfully, getting on the bad side of the native people via lactose poisoning in their favorite alcoholic beverage.
When Christopher Columbus was looking for a job, and got one with a little help from his friends (and Queen Isabella), and arrived in the "New World", the Ohlone's shell mound was much, much bigger. This poverty skolah wouldn't be surprised if the Inca, the Maya, and the seven nations of the Iroquois knew of them.
As the barbarian Conquistadores were forcing Turtle Islanders to join the carpenter's religion, the peaceful Ohlone must have been working hard to broker some kind of settlement with them.
By the time the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence, the holy site of the Ohlone was doomed. As my home country tries to figure out what it really is (Democracy? Republic? Empire? Bankrupt, economically and spiritually?),
Vallejo, a city that is technically bankrupt, cutting their last public infrastructure (Fire and Po'Lice Departments) to pieces, wants to create a parking lot and an out-house, paving over all that spiritual and community history.
Editor's Note: See other PNN-TV and PNN- on-line indigenous peoples media rep-ports on the resistance to the desecration of Sogorea Te by clicking here: