To provide defense against these sporadic attacks, the early settlers erected a series of forts in the area. Wood's Fort guarded the Forks-of-the-River just downstream from Newport, and McCoy's Fort and Whitson's Fort defended the area to the south.
The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter.
The oldest Earth rocks are about 3.8 billion years old, although some small, very old grains found in sandstone have been dated at 4.1 billion years. The solar system is believed to be about 4.6 billion years old. Therefore, there is little evidence left on Earth about the very early solar system.