Америка в прошлом и настоящем. Часть I. Горчакова Е.П - 4 стр.

                                          Unit I
                            Native Americans: The First Pioneers

Prereading Task
What Native American tribes do you know? What do you think these Native
Americans were like? Can you tell anything about their way of life?

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1.      America was not discovered by Christopher Columbus. In fact, Columbus
 and his men were not even the second explorers to reach America. They were the
 third. By 1000 A.D. the Viking explorers from Scandinavia had bravely explored the
 dangerous North Atlantic. They traveled from Iceland, to Greenland, and finally to
 Labrador and Newfoundland. But at that time European countries did not yet have
 enough wealth or knowledge to follow the Vikings. Soon the Vikings returned to
 Scandinavia, and America waited until 1492 for the ships of Columbus.
2.      Columbus arrived in America by accident. When he sailed west from Spain,
 he was hoping to discover a direct water route1 to the Orient. He never dreamed that
 two huge continents stood in his way. In fact, even when he reached America, he
 mistakenly thought he was in India. So he called the people who greeted him
 Indians. The name has been frequently used since that time.
3.      These Native Americans, of course, were not Indians. They were
 descendants2 of the first people who discovered America. Their ancestors3 had
 been on the American continents for thousands of years. Their story is the story of
 America's first explorers.

ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
4.     Unlike the Vikings and Columbus, the Native Americans did not arrive on
America's eastern shores. They came from the opposite direction. Nor did they come
by ship, as Columbus and the Vikings did. These explorers walked to the New
World. They used a land bridge which once connected the western edge of Alaska to
the eastern corner of Siberia. Sometime before 10,000 B.C. the first American pioneers
crossed this narrow bridge and discovered a large, rich land.
5.     Little by little4 the Native Americans explored the new world around them.
They walked through thick forests and across open fields. They followed long rivers
and the rocky coasts of the sea. They climbed ice-covered mountains and rested in
fresh, green valleys. Everywhere they went, animals appeared. On the wide plains,
there were great prehistoric5 mammals6. Fish swam in the rivers and the lakes.

1
  route: path, road, way
2
  descendents: later family generations
3
  Ancestors: previous family generations
4
  little by little: slowly, in small stages
5
  prehistoric: very old, before written history
6
  mammals: warm-blooded animals; e.g. dogs, horses

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