"They created bridges of land"

My 9-year old son recently completed a unit in school on early North American cultures and one of the topics that was covered was the concept of land bridges.  It reminded me of a common mistake my teenage students make when learning about the same topic: thinking that Paleolithic people built a bridge to get from Asia to North America.  The mistake is due, in large part, to a passage in one of the readings they are assigned:

"Early human ancestors began to migrate around the world, from Africa to Asia and beyond. About 1.6 million years ago, long periods of freezing temperatures caused ice sheets to cover the land and lower ocean levels. These times were called ice ages. They created bridges of land between continents, which hominids could cross."

Source: bbc.com

The pronoun "they" refers to ice ages but reading at quick glance it may seem like "they" refers to early humans and there you have the misunderstanding.  So when I asked my son how the first people reached North America, I offered the answer, "Early people built land bridges, right?"  He looked at me a bit awkward but nodded yes in agreement.  He's only 9 after all, but it's a good reminder that are sometimes too quick to accept information without considering its validity.  

So we reviewed some information sent home by his teacher and then turned to the teacher-of-all-things, YouTube.  We came across this great video depicting the spread of human populations across time (6 min):  

The kids were pretty intrigued so we ended up searching Netflix for a video on human origins and we came across the NOVA documentary The Great Human Odyssey.  They were pretty entertained by it and were able to get a better understanding of their ancient human ancestors and the challenges they overcame to not only survive but thrive in harsh environments. It's also available on YouTube (2 hr):

(OPTIONAL) ASSIGNMENT:  Create a visual depiction of early humans entering North America via the Bering Strait land bridge ("Beringia").   Be creative with how you'd like to depict this.  Here are some suggestions:

• Drawing of people making the ice age journey
• Map showing the path of human migration including dates
• Cartoon/meme depicting the event
• A fake movie advertisement related to the topic

Source: bbc.com