Keywords Geology

Beringia is a land of great beauty, with the highest mountains in North America overlooking broad plateaus and meandering rivers. It extends from frozen arctic coasts on the north to Pacific coasts warmed by the Japanese Current on the south. The temperatures range from some of the coldest on the Earth in winter to uncomfortably warm in summer. Twenty-four-hour summer days contrast with long periods of winter darkness.

Because of its aridity, much of Beringia remained unglaciated during the ice ages. The stratigraphy of long sequences of nonglacial sediment exposed at various sites can be correlated with alpine and continental glacial advances elsewhere. FOSSILS from such sediments are often exceptionally abundant and well preserved. They include pollen grains, plant fossils, invertebrates and vertebrate bones. Studies of fossils and of the sediments in which they occur have permitted tentative reconstructions of paleo-environments in western and eastern Beringia.

Beringia is of special importance in the study of human PREHISTORY since it is most likely the area through which man first entered the western hemisphere, presumably following the migrations of large MAMMALS, known from fossil evidence to have roamed eastward across the Bering Land Bridge. Portions of western Beringia (now eastern Siberia) may have been occupied by humans as early as 35 000 years ago. Artifacts of comparable age have been tentatively identified in eastern Beringia on the basis of broken and butchered mammal bones, but the oldest secure evidence of human occupation in Alaska or Yukon Territory dates to the period 20 000-25 000 years ago.

Permanent settlement of Beringia depended upon the invention and perfection of a complex array of cultural and technological skills. Tailored skin clothing, secure dwellings, control of fire, special methods of food procurement and storage and possibly some form of watercraft to cross large, cold-water bodies were prerequisites of human life in these latitudes. Some writers have suggested that the ancient colonization of Beringia represented a technological achievement equivalent to the penetration of such environments as Antarctica, the deep sea and the moon.

Beringia

Author RICHARD E. MORLAN

Links to Other Sites
Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre
Explore the treasures of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre and watch Beringia come alive. Check out the still emerging story of a long-ago ice age, North Amercia’s first human inhabitants, woolly mammoths, and other giant mammals of the past. Features links to related research sites.

Life of a Rock Star
This site tells the story of an extraordinary group of scientists who tramped, paddled and rolled across Canada in the nineteenth century to study the geology of Canada's varied terrain.

A Journey to a New Land
The purpose of this website is to examine and explore the issues around the first arrival of humans in the Americas. The activities are designed to present students with opportunities to learn more about archaeological methods and the human past. From the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Virtual Museum of Canada.