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 age of the solar system, derived from the study of meteorites (thought to be the oldest accessible material around) is near 5 billion years; that of the Earth is taken as 4.6 billion years. The oldest rocks on Earth are dated as 3.8 billion years.