Tribal oral tradition holds that Indians have lived in this region since the beginning, and a telling recorded in 1609 says that at the creation of the world there were five gods: the four winds and the great hare. The winds each ruled one section of the world, and the hare made people, placed them in a great bag, made the water and the land, filled the water with fish and the land with deer, and then placed men and women upon the earth. Evidence from as early as 16,000 BCE, at the end of the last Ice Age, shows that Eastern Virginia and the way people lived there were very different, with small family groups moving across the landscape hunting large mammals such as mammoth and mastodon, trading resources over long distances, and forming important social networks. About 8,000 BCE, a warmer and drier climate, the formation of the Chesapeake Bay, growing floodplains, and spreading oak and hickory forests brought major environmental change, and Native peoples adapted quickly by relying on wetlands for food and rivers for travel. As forests changed, fruits, nuts, and plants became more available for food and for making shelters, tools, and baskets, while deer, small game, birds, fish, and shellfish became more important in the diet. Oysters were harvested by the thousands, leaving shell refuse piles still visible today, and over time people lived in larger groups in small settlements near rivers and larger creeks. Around 4,000 years ago, domesticated native plants including sunflowers, sumpweed, gourd, maygrass, little barley, and goosefoot became important and reliable food sources, and as Virginia Indians grew more seed-bearing crops and cooked more nuts, they used mortars and pestles for grinding and stone vessels for cooking.