Bering Land Bridge: Its Historical Significance

Bering Land Bridge: Its Historical Significance

Today the Beringia is known as "a bridge to the past, present, and future". However, many once knew it as the path to the new world.

The Bering Land Bridge was once a large landmass that connected Asia to North America, or if you will, present-day Alaska to eastern Siberia. It was 580,000 square feet and ran for exactly 55 miles between Asia and North America. It emerged in the Bering Sea, as well as the Chukchi Sea, during the Pleistocene Ice Ages; only surfacing when sea levels dropped three hundred feet. Last arising 70,000 years ago and inundating 11,000 years ago. During the Pleistocene Ice Ages the Bering land bridge rose and fell seven times due to climate conditions. As the climate would change the environment, Beringia would change its ecosystem; determining what plants and animals would survive.

Despite the endless controversy as to which warm or cold period occurred when and to what animals and plants where present during that time, one thing is certain. Mammoths, horses and bison were in fact present on the bridge due to archeological findings. However, like the first Americans, they used the bridge merely to migrate since conditions were not adequate for long-term settlement.

It was once believed that the first human migrants were mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers who stumbled across the bridge in search of game. These nomadic hunter- gatherers were later thought to create the Clovis culture, which then flourished in North America about 11,500 years ago. Today people have almost abandoned the "Clovis-first" theory due to new evidence in various fields ranging from biology to linguistics.

The most prevalent evidence has to do with mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA. This proves that there was genetic diversity in the founding population and that human migration occurred 30,000 to 10,000 years ago, or during the last major phase of the Wisconsin glaciation. Scientist had been able to prove that the migrants first left Siberia and came to a stalemate in Beringia which lasted for 15,00 years. For that time their mtDNA was mutated, or genetically changed from those of their Asian relatives. MtDNA has lead to many discoveries. For example, it was said that people only used the bridge to travel to the new world, when in actuality it was used both ways. For example, animals such as lions, which evolved in Asia, traveled to North America and equids , which evolved in North America, migrated to Asia. This proves that current views on migration from Asia to the Americas differs from those previously held.

Moreover, the Bering Land Bridge is significant because it brought people over to the new world and allowed for people to simply walk from Asia to North America.

It is an important part of history and without its existence, North America