There have been many theories proposed over the years regarding the belief of Beringia: a prehistoric landmass that functioned as a bridge which allowed ancient peoples to cross the small stretch of water between modern day Alaska and Siberia, that is now known as the Bering Strait. One of the newest theories, as explored in one of our assignments for Module 4, is known as the “Beringian Standstill Hypothesis.” This theory was proposed by Dr. Edward Vajda in 2008, when he concluded that instead of trekking across Beringia directly many thousands of years ago, these ancient peoples lived in isolation on Beringia for nearly 15,000 years before migrating out into modern-day Siberia and Alaska. The land bridge theory has been around for over 400 years since the Spanish explorer/missionary José de Acosta initially proposed his idea in 1590, and has henceforth been a widely accepted theory since the 1930s. Between 1929 and 1937, a collection of spear points was discovered near Clovis, New Mexico that had a strikingly similar resemblance to the kinds of artifacts found in Beringia years before. Since then, carbon dating of these relics has been able to place them as being around the neighborhood of 13,000 to 13,500 years old, closely matching the timeline of the Beringian Standstill Hypothesis that concluded that these ancient peoples migrated into North America around 15,000 to 10,000 years ago. Because the migration of this once unexplored land would have been extremely leisurely, it makes sense that the arrowheads found in the southern part of the United States (Clovis, New Mexico) were dated as a few thousand years “newer” than the arrowheads found in the Beringian region of the Arctic Circle. Furthermore, with advances in modern technologies, there have been genetic tests conducted as well as linguistic analyses done on Native American languages conducted in order to further prove the existence of the Beringian land bridge and learn more about it. Many of these genetic tests were based upon the findings of a young child found in 1968 near Wilsall, Montana. This child’s remains were discovered along with more than 100 stone and bone tools that were dated to be about 12,700 years old and descended from the Clovis people (Balter 2014). This deeply significant find was, and remains to be the oldest known burial in North America. Years later, this young child’s remains were genetically sequenced, and what scientists discovered was utterly amazing. When comparing this child’s genome to that of a 24,000-year-old Siberian boy and a 4,000-year-old Paleo-Eskimo from Greenland, these scientists were able to confirm without a doubt that Native Americans had indeed originally come from Northeastern Asia/Eurasia (Elias 2014).
It is truly amazing just how much modern science and technology has taught us and allowed us to discover about the past that would have never previously even been dreamed as being possible in earlier times. Stories such as these make me excited for all the opportunities that the future and all its technological innovations can tell us about our past. On that same note, however, it is ironic that every year that goes by, history becomes more dated and difficult to uncover, yet with such miraculous advances in modern technology (such as carbon dating and genetic fingerprinting), we are able to look further and deeper into the past than ever before.
References:
Elias, Scott. 2014. First Americans lived on land bridge for thousands of years, genetics study suggests. www.theconversation.com. Accessed February 8, 2017.
Wade, Nicholas. 2014. Pause Is Seen in a Continent’s Peopling. www.nytimes.com. Accessed February 8, 2017.
Balter, Michael. 2014. Native American Descend from Ancient Montana Boy. www.sciencemag.org. Accessed February 8, 2017.
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