The Great Lakes are series of freshwater lakes located in the east ofNorth America and on the Canada-United States perimeter. It consist of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the prime group of freshwater lakes, commonly referred to as inland seas or Canada and the United States' Third Coast.

The history of the Great Lakes of North America were formed approximately at the end of the Pleistocene period, it is the time when the glaciers carved lake basins that were filled with melted water from the retreating ice sheet over the surface of what is now North America.  The last major glaciers known as the large masses of ice called the Lauren tide began to formed around 100,000 years ago, the Lauren tide covered almost all over Canada and extended into the United States and as the glaciers advanced, giant sheets of ice flowed into the land that leveled the mountains and carving out massive valleys, this process was known as glacial erosion.  The Lauren tide began retreating and melting due to warmer temperatures occurred around 14,000 years ago.  This occurrence caused by the geological changes resulted in the formation of Great Lakes.  These Great Lakes of the Laurentian Shield are group of five large lakes of North America on or near the Canada-United States border and from these large lakes came the largest groups of fresh water lakes on Earth.