DEFINING GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

1. Terminology of the British Isles 

A diagram clarifying the terminology, with geographical terms in blue, and political terms in red. Various terms are used to describe the different (and sometimes overlapping) geographical and political areas of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, and surrounding islands. The terminology is often a source of confusion, partly owing to the similarity between some of the actual words used, but also because they are often used loosely. Thepurpose of this article is to explain the meanings of and relationships among those terms. In brief, the main terms and their simple explanations are as follows.

EARLY AMERICA (to 1500s)

1. Pre-Columbian era

A. The first Americans - at the height of the Ice Age, be­tween 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the world’s water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia and North America. At its peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 ki­lometers wide. A moist and treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses and plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1500-1750)

After a period of exploration sponsored by major European nations, the first successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, turkeys, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the Americas. The effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists, especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as they had no immunity to them. They suffered epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted and hollowed out by the scale of deaths.