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The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is perched upon the northern most reaches of the Seward Peninsula in Northwest Alaska on the cusp of the Arctic Circle. It is one of the most remote and isolated wilderness areas on earth and one of the least visited of the National Park units in the United States.
The remote, seldom visited Preserve stands as a testament to the belief that we need to protect and honor fundamental ideas about America's identity that provide insight into both our ancient origins and their links to the myriad of present-day American cultures.
As the Preserve's name suggests, it not only commemorates a physical remnant of what was once the 1,000 mile wide Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), it seeks to the maximum extent possible to preserve the culture, history, and lifestyle of the humans who crossed the Land Bridge thousands of years ago, people who would ultimately populate much of North and South America and become the first Americans.
Bering Land Bridge Theory
Over the last half-century, archaeologists have largely concurred that the first Americans migrated into North America from Asia more than fourteen to twenty thousand years ago via an overland route across the frozen Land Bridge.
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Although it is likely that there were additional migration routes into America, the importance of ancient Beringia and its role in peopling America is undeniable.
The initial empirical confirmation for the long-held Land Bridge theory came from the discovery of spear points near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 20th century, between 1929 and 1937, that matched the kinds of artifacts found in Beringia.
Carbon dating has now placed these spear points at more than 13,500 years old. The majority of archaeologists have traditionally seen this as direct proof of both the Bering Land Bridge theory and timeline of early migration into America.
Subsequent discoveries of Clovis style artifacts in other areas of the Southwestern United States seemed to offer further confirmation for the theory and timeline, which held undisputed sway for many decades. Even today, the Berginia theory, with its rich archaeological record, is still the dominant American migration hypothesis.
Monte Verde
However, in 1997 a panel of blue-ribbon archaeologists conducting an excavation at an ancient site in Monte Verde, Chile, unanimously concluded that the archaeological materials they found dated to 14,500 years ago. These findings directly challenged the initial theory of the Clovis people being the first group of humans to settle in the new world.
The Monte Verde discovery shows that non-Clovis human settlements were well established in America more than 1,000 years earlier than the dates of the Clovis, New Mexico artifacts and that these early Americans were able to settle as far south as central Chile.
Atlantic Theory
One new theory posited by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian and archeologist Bruce Bradley claims that it is possible the first Americans didn't cross the Bering Land Bridge at all and didn't travel by foot but by boat - across the Atlantic!
Though the evidence for this theory is not as strong as for the Berginia migration, Stanford and Bradley argue that artifacts developed by an earlier and still more ancient European culture, the Solutrean, bear an uncanny resemblance to the artifacts of the Clovis tools found in the United States. This could suggest that humans entered America from the east via what has been dubbed the Atlantic Maritime route.
Oceania Theory
Still another theory spawned by studies in cultural anthropology and linguistics posits a striking resemblance between the cultures of Australia, Polynesia and South America that ultimately suggests a pan-Pacific journey brought the first migrants to America's shores.
Supporting this Oceania theory of migration is "Kennewick Man," the skeletal remains of a 9,500 year old human phenotype first discovered in 1996 in Washington State in the U.S. Some physical anthropologists argue that Kennewick Man bears a striking resemblance to the facial features of modern Ainu peoples of Japan. Such a link ultimately lends credence to the case for a pan-Pacific journey to the Americas.
The current debate among advocates of competing migration theories (There are other theories besides those noted here.) will continue to generate an array of conflicting interpretations for years to come. Indeed, the search for the origins of the first Americans is perhaps the greatest detective story of our time. It represents a mystery at the heart of early human history that is not even close to being solved. Even mtDNA testing indicates that while most Native Americans are closely related to the people of Asia, a substantial percentage are more closely related genetically to early Europeans.
Ironically, uncertainty appears to be the only constant in the current migration debate. But one thing is certain: there is so much archaeological and DNA evidence of early human migration across the Bering Land Bridge, that no inquiry into the origins of America would be complete without an examination of that evidence.
What is America? Our quest for answers must begin in the remnants of ancient Beringia found in modern Siberia and Alaska.
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Sources
This article was adapted from material on the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve website and supplemented by additional research at the links noted below from Stanford University and the University of Illinois.
http://www.nps.gov/bela/historyculture/other-migration-theories.html
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=41
http://news.illinois.edu/news/07/1025genetics.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_migration_to_the_New_World
Photos courtesy of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, U.S., and the Beringia Nature Ethnic Park, Russia.
http://www.nps.gov/bela/
http://www.beringiapark.ru
