History
Around 2500 BCE, the first humans, the
Paleo-Eskimos, arrived in the archipelago from the Canadian mainland. Between 1000 and 1500 CE, they were replaced by the
Thule people, who are the ancestors of today's
Inuit. British claims on the islands, the
British Arctic Territories, were based on the explorations in the 1570s by
Martin Frobisher. Canadian sovereignty was originally (1870–80) only over island portions that drained into
Foxe Basin,
Hudson Bay and
Hudson Strait. Canadian sovereignty over the islands was established by 1880 when Britain transferred them to Canada. The
District of Franklin—established in 1895—comprised almost all of the archipelago. The district was dissolved upon the creation of Nunavut in 1999. Canada claims all the waterways of the
Northwest Passage as
Canadian Internal Waters; however, most maritime countries view these as
international waters. Disagreement over the passages' status has raised Canadian concerns about environmental enforcement, national security, and general sovereignty. East of
Ellesmere Island, in the
Nares Strait, lies
Hans Island, ownership of which is now shared between Canada and Denmark, after a decades-long dispute. ==Geography==
Geography
, the largest island by total area of the Arctic Archipelago The archipelago extends some longitudinally and from the mainland to
Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the
Beaufort Sea; on the northwest by the
Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland,
Baffin Bay and
Davis Strait; and on the south by
Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other and the continental mainland by a series of waterways collectively known as the
Northwest Passage. Two large peninsulas,
Boothia and
Melville, extend northward from the mainland. The northernmost cluster of islands, including
Ellesmere Island, is known as the
Queen Elizabeth Islands and was formerly the Parry Islands. The archipelago consists of 36,563 islands, of which 94 are classified as major islands, being larger than , and cover a total area of . After Greenland, the archipelago is the world's largest high-Arctic land area. The climate of the islands is
Arctic, and the terrain consists of
tundra except in mountainous regions. Most of the islands are uninhabited; human settlement is extremely thin and scattered, being mainly coastal
Inuit settlements on the southern islands. ==Map with links to islands==
Mapping
• King Christian, • Borden, • Lougheed, • Brock, • Mackenzie King • Helena, • Cameron, • Emerald Isle, • Prince Patrick, • Île Vanier, • Eglinton, • Alexander, • Bathurst, • Melville, • Byam Martin, • Banks, • Stefansson, • Russell, • Prince of Wales, • Prescott, • Somerset, • Victoria, • King William, • Matty, • Wales, • Belcher, • Long, • Akimiski, • Charlton, • Ellesmere, • Meighen, • Axel Heiberg, • Ellef Ringnes, • Amund Ringnes, • Cornwall, • Graham, • North Kent, • Baillie-Hamilton, • Little Cornwallis, • Cornwallis, • Devon, • Bylot, • Baffin, • Jens Munk, • Koch, • Bray, • Rowley, • Foley, • Air Force, • Prince Charles, • Vansittart, • White, • Southampton, • Resolution, • Loks Land, • Akpatok, • Big, • Salisbury, • Nottingham, • Mansel, • Coats, • Beechey, • Broughton, • Cape Chidley, • Dorset, • Duke of York, • East Pen, • Flaherty, • Haig-Thomas, • Hans, • Herschel, • Igloolik, • Killiniq, • Ottawa, • Prince Leopold, • Jenny Lind, • Skraeling, • Trodely, • Gateshead, • Weston, ==See also==