The era in Canada's past, known as Pre-history, describes a period where traditional used European and Western methods of recording and relating history were not present. The story of the aboriginal people of Canada are told through stories, legends, songs and dance. They were passed from generation to generation in a verbal manner much as Homer's Iliad was and sometimes recorded in art forms such as wampum or Totem poles.

Archeological digs and projects have done much to undercover the story of pre-European contact and this process has done much to expand the knowledge base and lives of those native people who had arrived 10s of thousands of years ago and 1000 years ago.

Additional insight into that world is provided by the first impressions of the explorers and settlers from Europe  but as soon as contact was made, the native populations world began to change. Some  bands such as the Beothuk did not survive contact and as a race they died out completely with very little knowledge obtained about them. Pre-history ends with the arrival of the Vikings and then more generally with the explorers in the 1490's. Never would the Canadian landscape be the same once the new comers  arrived.