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For countless generations the people, the Dene and Inuvialuit have lived in this northern land: the Dene, around the sub-arctic forests, the tundra, mountains, lakes and rivers; the Inuvialuit along the Arctic coastline, islands and tundra. They call their homeland Denedeh, or Nuna, the Land.
Scientific explanations of the origins of people in this land suggest that what we now call the NWT was almost completely covered by sheets of ice during the last ice age (15 000 to 30 000 years ago). The Mackenzie Delta, northern Yukon, Alaska, eastern Siberia and the land west of Banks Island were not.
One scientific theory suggests that there existed a land bridge between Asia and North America called Beringia. The large, hardy animals that grazed on the Ice Age tundra, close to the receding ice, musk-ox, bison, caribou, and wooly mammoth, were able to travel between the two continents, as were ancient Siberian hunters.
Some reached the area of Crow Flats in northern Yukon; fossilized animal bones and tools have been recovered in this area. Radiocarbon dating has indicated that these artifacts are approximately 25-30 000 years old. It is thought that these people moved south and were the ancestors of the American Indians.
According to this ‘Beringia land bridge theory’, during the end of the last Ice Age (10-15 000 years ago), the land bridge was flooded, creating what is now known as the Bering Sea and the Bering Strait. This narrow strait was still used as a passageway for people to travel from Asia to the American continent. They crossed in skin boats or across the ice, and traveled thousands of miles over a period of thousands of years, eventually reaching points far south.
Like their predecessors, they became ancestors of modern Indian people. As the last of the great ice sheets melted, lakes and rivers formed in the great basins and valleys of the American continent. As the climate warmed, mammals, fish, birds and plants thrived; some of the large animals moved north, followed by big game hunters and caribou hunters: the ancestors of the Dene.
These theories are still full of many questions, however. Scientists, botanists, geologists, archaeologists and anthropologists continue to complete the jigsaw of prehistoric life. Several new scientific explanations for the arrival of the first North American people are currently being explored. The scientific story of how people came to be in the North of this continent is not certain, nor complete. The combination of oral tradition and science helps to clarify the story.
