Topic 1 · The First Americans
Study guide notes, academic vocabulary, and review questions with answers. Textbook pages 7–10.
How did geography influence the original settlement of North America?
That is the one question this lesson answers. Every note, every word, and every review question below comes back to it: geography opened the road, and food set the pace.
The lesson video is posted in Google Classroom. This page is the written material that goes with it, in the same order as your workbook: notes first, then vocabulary, then the review questions. Answers are hidden until you click Show answer. Try each one in your workbook before you click.
During the last ice age, a large share of Earth's water froze into glaciers. Water locked up in ice is water not in the ocean, so sea levels dropped — and the sea floor between Siberia and Alaska came up out of the water as dry land. That land is Beringia. It was never pushed up or built; the ocean simply fell far enough to uncover it.
Your pages carry three, not one. People walked across Beringia into Alaska; people lived on Beringia rather than only crossing it; and people travelled by small boat down the Pacific coast. The map on page 8 shows two of them at once — land routes and a sea route.
Indigenous peoples preserve their own accounts of their beginnings, reflecting deep cultural and spiritual connections to the land. Your book gives one on page 7: the Iroquois account of Sky Woman and the Great Turtle. That is the example to hold in mind when you write the definition for Origin Story in your vocabulary box.
Two dates, and they are not the same event. Page 8 gives you both. Temperatures started to rise about 15,000 years ago — that is the beginning of the end of the ice age. The last ice age actually ended about 10,000 years ago. Roughly five thousand years apart. If you meet both numbers and think the page contradicts itself, it does not: one is when the warming started, the other is when it finished.
Tap any word for a picture and the full definition. The bold part is the definition to write in your box.
Watch this one: in everyday talk a theory is just a guess. In science it is close to the opposite — an explanation that has to account for all the evidence, and one scientists replace when new evidence does not fit. That difference is the whole of the last review question.
Write the answer for each one in your workbook in your own words first. Then tap Show answer to see if you got it right.
The movement of people into a new area.
Bering Land Bridge tundra today
The prehistoric land bridge connecting Asia and North America during the Ice Age.
A long period of extreme cold.
A huge sheet of ice.
A modern Alaskan icefield
Physical objects left behind thousands of years ago.
A Clovis point from Utah
An account a people preserves about their own beginnings.
An artist’s illustration
A scientist’s explanation for a set of facts.
Maize cobs, 900–1300 AD, Utah
A narrow passage of water between two larger bodies of water.
The Bering coast today
Moving from place to place instead of settling.
A painting, early 20th century
They came by land across Beringia and by sea down the Pacific coast. Beringia was the land bridge into Alaska; the sea route used small boats. The map on page 8 shows both of those routes at once. A third idea is that people lived on Beringia itself rather than only crossing it.
The map on page 8
They followed their food — the game they hunted and the plants they gathered. That is what nomadic means: moving from place to place instead of settling.
The map on page 8
Beringia appeared when Ice Age sea levels dropped, and disappeared when they rose again. Water froze into glaciers, then the glaciers melted. The land was never pushed up or built — the ocean simply fell far enough to uncover it. Temperatures started rising about 15,000 years ago, and the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.
21,000 years ago to today
To find food. They were nomadic and moved until hunting and gathering were good. They kept moving until they reached a place where they could hunt and gather well.
A woolly mammoth skeleton
The dates do not fit: evidence puts people here before Beringia was livable. Beringia may not have been livable until about 12,600 years ago, but evidence puts people here nearly 15,000 years ago. Archaeologists are still collecting evidence, and when new evidence does not fit, scientists look for a better theory.
A Clovis spear point
Look at what every one of those answers had in common. Low oceans opened a bridge. Melting ice took the bridge away. And food decided where people went next. If someone asked you right now how geography influenced the original settlement of North America, you should be able to answer in one sentence: geography opened the road, and food set the pace. If you can say what made Beringia appear, what made it disappear, and why people kept walking south, you have Lesson 2.
Every photograph in this video is public domain, CC0, or openly licensed. Credit is given as a courtesy.
Textbook page images, including the “Routes to the Americas” map, are reproduced from Early Americans pages 7–10 for classroom use only.