Name:
Date:
7th Grade Social Studies
The Earliest Americans
Primary Source
“What a wild world it was!! To see it properly, we must board a time machine and travel back into the
Ice Age. The northern half of North America was vanished, buried beneath ice sheets two miles thick.
Stretching south to Kentucky, they buckle the earth’s crust with their weight… Animals grow oversize..
Elephant-eating jaguars stand tall as lions, beavers grow as big as bears, South American sloths as tall as
giraffes. With aortic cold pushing so far southward, walrus bask on Virginia beaches and musk-oxen
graze from Maryland to California.”
–
Thomas Canby “The Search for the first American”
Questions
1. What might explain for the abundance of animal life that Canby describes?
2. What geographic region does Canby mention?
3. Explain how the climate differed in North America and South America. How was the
environment different between the two continents?
4. What role does environment play in the development of a society?
5. How did geography affect the movements of the early Americans and how they lived?