regions and the different human histories they have experienced may be related to events stretching back hundreds of millions of years; a complete understanding of Connecticut's history and landscapes must encompass the full reach of time. To relate mill dams and church spires to the primeval movement of continents is the focus of this chapter.

The Four Terranes

The following is a one word overview of Connecticut's geologic history: crunch. Connecticut is country contracted and contorted like cardboard in a garbage compactor. What was once a region perhaps thousands of miles across has been compressed into the third smallest state in the Union. The cause: continental collision.

The world was a very different place 500 million years ago, almost unrecognizable as our own Earth. North America basked in the heat of the tropics, Europe lay broken into several small pieces, Africa had drifted down to the south pole, and Antarctica straddled the equator. A group of islands and minicontinents, such as a Japan or two plus a few Virgin Islands, lay a thousand miles or so off North America's shore. Geologists call these islands "Avalonia") A sort of proto-Atlantic Ocean separated Avalonia, Africa, and the various pieces of Europe from North America. Geologists have named this ancient sea the "Iapetos Ocean" (pronounced YAP-eh-toes) after the mythical father of Atlas, for whom the Atlantic Ocean is named. Had he set sail in the early Paleozoic, Columbus would have crossed the Iapetos instead of the Atlantic.

Much has happened between that time and this to redraw geography into today's world, and Connecticut was in the thick of the action. Current geologic thought places Connecticut in the midst of a collision in which all the world's early continents united into a single land mass. Geologists refer to this supercontinent as "Pangaea" (from the Greek for "all-lands"). The collision closed the Iapetos with a mighty crunch, and by about 250 million years ago a great weld had formed between the continents, with Avalonia for solder and sediments from the floor of the

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