Category: San Jose

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San Jose Facts

Native people were in California for over 10,000 years. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the people that would became known as the Ohlone moved in to the bay area and San José. The Ohlone then did something few groups of people have ever done in the history of earth. They enjoyed approximately 4,500 years of peace. A peace that evidence indicates amounted to approximately 4,500 years without an epidemic, significant conflict or war, natural catastrophe, or famine. Wow, that is a long run of peace, good management, and fortune.

Source: The Ohlone Way, book by Malcom Margolin, 1978, pages 58-60.

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NASA

NASA
Just a corner of the largest wind tunnel in the world at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. So big that full size airliners go into it with wing spans up to 100 feet across.
NASA
A close up of the wood from the original fan blades of the wind tunnel. Each blade is taller than a tall human and would have been one of many blades around each of the six motors filling up a four story tall space and generating the wind in the tunnel. So smooth and flush, these wood pieces.
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Library Art

Library Art
Art on the window, looking out of this San Jose library. A story can be made from the details.
Outside the library, this metal tree statue stands near a book return bin.
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San Jose Facts

1901 Smithsonian Native Languages Map

California, including the Bay Area, have always been places of great diversity. Before Europeans arrived, California already supported the densest population of native peoples anywhere in what would become the United States of America, with over 300,000 native people. (1)(3) Along with this, California supported more distinct languages and culture groups than anywhere else in the future US. The map above is from a Smithsonian report in 1901 displaying native languages of north America and it is easy to see the increased density in California. (2) The native people of San José, California were the Thamien. They were just one of approximately 40 groups of native peoples speaking 12 different languages now referred to as the Ohlone people inhabiting the area from San Francisco Bay to Monterey Bay. (1)

Sources:
(1) The Ohlone Way, book by Malcom Margolin, 1978, pages 1 to 3.
(2) https://www.ocregister.com/2019/11/08/the-number-of-native-american-tribal-languages-in-california-might-surprise-you/ ,2020.
(3) https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/essay/1/pre-columbian/ , 2020.

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San Jose Facts

Most of California, the exception being a south eastern piece, is made of recycled sea floor scraped off as the ocean floor subducted beneath the North American Tectonic Plate. That means that all of this rock we are standing on in San José and the surrounding area was actually ocean floor millions of years ago. It has since piled on to what is now the USA like the crinkled butter that builds up on the butter knife that scrapes across it. Millions of years ago the North America coastline was way further east of what is now the California coast; before so much north-east moving oceanic crust went under the westward moving North American Plate.

All of the dark grey area in the above map is ocean floor that had been scraped up and added to the land that is now the US and Mexico during the last 200 million years.

Source: Rough-Hewn Land, book by Keith Meldahl, 2011, page 9.