Beringia

Beringia, any in a series of landforms that once existed periodically and in various configurations between northeastern Asia and northwestern North America and that were associated with periods of worldwide glaciation and subsequent lowering of sea levels. Such dryland regions began appearing between the two continents about 70 million years ago, but the term Beringia more commonly refers to the often large areas that intermittently linked present-day northwestern Canada and northern and western Alaska, U.S., with northeastern Siberia, Russia, during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to about 11,700 years ago). It is particularly associated with the most recent of these regions, which began to appear about 38,000 years ago and remained in place roughly until the end of the Pleistocene, at which time the present-day Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia (linking what are now the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea) opened and severed the intercontinental land connection. Fossil evidence strongly supports the belief that, over time, the various “land bridges” allowed plants and animals to move between the Old and New worlds; the most recent Beringia is also considered to be at least one of the ways (if not the principal route) by which humans migrated into and populated the Americas.

Generally, Beringia is now thought to have been at its greatest extent roughly 20,000 years ago, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Glacial Stage (the last glacial maximum of the Pleistocene). Because so much of Earth’s water was then frozen in glaciers, sea levels worldwide were lowered by as much as some 400 feet (120 metres), exposing large areas of former seafloor. In the Arctic and subarctic regions, at that time, Beringia is estimated to have occupied a vast region of dry land extending northward into territory now inundated by the southern Arctic Ocean and stretching eastward from perhaps as far west as the present-day Lena River delta in Siberia to the Mackenzie River delta in Canada’s Yukon territory. It continued southward for some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) through the then-dry seafloor of the Bering Strait and occupied roughly the northern half of the Bering Sea. Over the next several thousand years, as the glaciers melted and sea levels began to rise, Beringia gradually shrank in size until, eventually, the land connection was completely lost.

Although glaciation throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere was extensive during the late Wisconsin period, with ice reaching thicknesses of as much as 2.5 miles (4 km) in places, research has shown that much of Beringia had a dry climate and thus was not glaciated. This condition supported cold-hardy tundra vegetation that allowed land mammals to venture eastward into North America. According to some theories, humans followed along this overland route in search of game, while others have postulated that ancient peoples may have arrived in boats or via a more coastal land route. Although there is no clear agreement on how humans arrived in the Americas, it is widely believed that the native peoples living there now are descendants of these long-ago ancestors from Asia. Considerable paleontological, archaeological, and ethnographic research has been conducted in Arctic regions looking to fill the gaps in the prehistoric record.

Present-day portions of former Beringia lands on either side of the Bering Strait have been designated as protected areas. Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska occupies much of the northern and central Seward Peninsula. On the Russian side, the entire northeastern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula is now within a state-run park, established in 1993 and headquartered in the coastal town of Provideniya. A number of institutions of higher learning in the northern region conduct research on Beringia. In addition, the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse, Yukon, and a museum in Provideniya are dedicated to scientific, historical, and cultural aspects of the region.