An Aboriginal Presence

About 18,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age, almost all of northern North America lay under a heavy mantle of glacial ice. The land was uninhabitable, and by modern standards, unrecognizable. Only the far northwest - a region known as Beringia - was unglaciated and open to human occupation. The early history of First Peoples in Canada begins with the fact of this glacial ice, and its subsequent melting.