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The First Americans

The First Americans

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 You probably learned in school that the first Americans came from Siberia, crossing the Bering Strait into Alaska. That ancient history is still widely accepted—but it has a few new wrinkles. Archaeological records now show that humans left Siberia 25,000 years ago but didn’t arrive in North America till 15,000 years ago. Where were they for 10,000 years in between? New research suggests they were living in the Bering Strait, in a now-submerged land called Beringia. During the peak of the last Ice Age, much of Earth’s water was held in continental ice sheets that caused ocean levels to drop 400 ft. The land of Beringia was exposed, as much as 3 million square kilometers. It appears humans were trapped in this inhospitable terrain by glaciers to the east and west. This great frozen tundra would not have supported the bison and mammoth that other early humans depended on. But it could have sustained caribou. Perhaps more important, it held arctic oases of trees and brush, enough to provide shelter and firewood for the Beringians, who survived 10,000 years of winter by burning wood and animal bones. They stayed in Beringia long enough to become genetically distinct from their Siberian ancestors, which we see in DNA analysis of Native tribes in both North and South America— the majority of whom descended from the Beringians. It’s a remarkable testament to human resilience.
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