Wikibooks: Canadian History/First Settlers

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Yukon; Bering Strait; Canada; Hudson; British Columbia; First Nations; glaciers; Alaska; Beringia; Siberia
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_History/First_Settlers

‹ [[Back to the Introduction]] The Coming of the First Settlers As there are no written records maintained from the era prior to the coming of Europeans to North America there is no exact information on how the people now referred to as First Nations came to the continent. There have been theories proposed to explain the coming of the people with one being generally accepted as the most plausible the Landbridge Theory. During the most recent of the Ice Ages large portions of the northern hemisphere were coated in ice. This ice covered much of what is now Canada. As all of this ice was formed the water levels around the world lowered causing land masses previously inaccessible to become available. One such landmass was located where the Bering Strait is today Beringia which formed a link between what is now Siberia and Alaska. This newly formed landmass is estimated to have been 1000 kilometres wide and 90 kilometres long (the modern distance between the two continents). With the increasing cold plant life in the northern lands was dwindling and causing an exodus of wildlife. Animals began roaming farther in search for sustenance. As the people of the time were dependent on both they were forced to follow or die. Those that moved across Beringia were a nomadic people which followed their prey into the previously untapped lands which now include Alberta and parts of the Yukon and British Columbia. This migration of people happened some time between 100 000 and 30 000 years ago. About 17 000 years ago the temperatures in North America began to increase once more and the ice which is thought to have been upwards of 3 kilometres thick in locations over the Rocky Mountains and Hudson s Bay began to melt off. With the receding of the ice at the end of this time the scars in the land carved by the coming of the glaciers and their movement were filled with the water produced by the melting. This is used to explain the creation of what is now the Great Lakes of Ontario and the myriad of other small bodies of water ...