The story of human migration into the Americas is a complex
story, one of evidence (and lack thereof), of conjecture, of belief, and of debate.
Common knowledge holds that roving groups of hunters and gatherers journeyed across
a land bridge from Asia to Alaska. These people then spread out south through
ice-free corridors that opened between retreating glaciers around 13,000 years
ago. After escaping the ice, humans quickly spread across the northern,
central, and southern sections of the hemisphere, adapting to the varied
landscapes and environments they encountered. This narrative, popularly known
as the Bering Land Bridge theory, offers a compelling explanation on how the
first peoples arrived here.
Doubts hover around this theory. Was there just one wave of
migration across the Bering Land Bridge or several waves? Did people from other
places besides Siberia- perhaps from Europe or Polynesia- also find the shores
of the Americas? Did humans arrive by boat instead of on foot? Once here, how
did people change the landscape? And finally, what do descendants of the first Americans
say about their origins? As archeologist Dr. Beth O’Leary says: “It’s
complicated.”
Let’s go through the evidence about the Bering connection.
During the last period of world-wide glaciation (from 75,000 to 11,000 years
ago), the sea level dropped as massive ice sheets locked up much of the world’s
water. As sea levels dropped, a land bridge emerged between Asia and America,
stretching from the Chukotka peninsula in Asia to the Seward Peninsula in
Alaska. The first mention of a land bridge occurred in 1590, when a Jesuit
missionary to Latin America, José de Acosta, speculated that such a connection
between Asia and North America allowed humans to enter this continent. By the
1930s, evidence established the existence of the land bridge so that in 1937,
botanist Eric Hultén dubbed the land bridge “Beringia.” Later scholars
broadened the definition to include northeastern Siberia and western Alaska.[1]
Climatologists estimate that a 600 mile wide land bridge connected
the sixty mile gap between the continents. This isthmus eventually sank under
the rising waters as glaciers melted sometime around 12,000 years before
present (BP) -- give or take a few thousand years.
Unfortunately, the glaciers that caused the land bridge would
have blocked further migration as the ice swallowed whole valleys and smothered
the mountains in Alaska and western Canada. These glaciers retreated, and an
ice door opened around 13,500 years BP. So humans could have crossed to America
on the Bering land bridge, but unless they traveled over the treacherous
glaciers in journeys that might have taken weeks if not longer, they remained
blocked at the entrance to the New World.
Now here is the dilemma. Caves in Monte Verde, Chile, and
Meadowcroft, Pennsylvania, have produced carbon dating of objects that shows humans
entering into the Americas 13,500 years BP. The cave in Chile by some testing dates
back to around 15,000 years BP and the cave in Pennsylvania from 14,000 to
12,500 years BP.[2]
Other sites of human occupation at Cactus Hill and Saltville, Virginia and the
Topper site near Savannah, Georgia, also could predate the opening of the ice
corridor from Alaska into the rest of North America.[3] With
the passage south into the rest of the hemisphere blocked by ice from around
25,000 years until 13,500 years BP, humans either survived the trek over the
glaciers, or they came a different route. They might have come by sea, either
along the coast of the land bridge, or across the Pacific Ocean as an extension
of Polynesian explorers, or even from Europe.
Navigating small boats that held ten or fifteen people over
the thousands of miles of the Pacific or across the frigid waters from Europe to
Iceland and Greenland, and then to North America seems unlikely, but humans did
get to the Easter and the Hawaiian Islands in such a manner. Paddling along the
coast of Beringia in hide-covered boats and living off of the marine animals
that proliferate there seems more likely. Using boats to spread down the
Pacific coast into South America and the cave at Monte Verde makes sense. So navigating
the coastlines from Asia into Alaska and then down the western Americas to
Chile, while daunting, helps resolve the dilemma; however, we have no camp
sites or other evidence to prove this, mainly because such sites if they do
exist, lie underwater, drowned by the rising sea levels as glaciers melted.
Genetics provide some clarification of the dilemma. Analysis
of the founding DNA lineages for Native Americans estimate that humans expanded
into the Americas from East Asia sometime between 18,000 and 16,000 years BP.
So people must have already been below the northern glacial ice sheet before
13,500 years BP.[4]
Additional DNA studies point to multiple waves of migration.
There exists enough of a variation in the DNA of today’s
Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere that researchers speculate that
people from different parts of Siberia and East Asia contributed to the
peopling of the Americas. As Theodore Schurr concludes: “… both the mtDNA [mitochondrial
DNA] and the Y chromosome data show evidence that more than one expansion
contributed to the genetic diversity of modern American groups.”[5] Of
course, as humans evolved in the western hemisphere and became distinct from
their ancestors elsewhere, the evidence is mixed up in a dynamic and fluid
mixture of strands of DNA like a bowl of spaghetti.
Scholars studying glaciers, climate, genetics, and ancient
human sites generally agree that humans in the Western Hemisphere came from
Siberia and East Asia in more than one wave of migration and fairly quickly
spread out east and south to populate the land. Since human-made stone tools
appeared in the East Coast before the Midwest and the Southwest, people
probably had to skirt over the northern edge of the massive glaciers and
eventually came south into the continent somewhere near the Great Lakes.
Once humans entered a region, they began to alter it. The
concept of a virgin wilderness is a potent myth for the United States and the
National Parks; however, with the first footstep, land turned into place, and
people started to change it. Even though the First Peoples’ impact might seem
minimal by today’s standards, they still changed the environment. From hunting
and gathering to setting fires to the prairies, from managing water for crops which
they planted to creating narratives and histories about themselves and their
landscapes, people impact their surroundings. Humans have lived and altered this
land for hundreds of generations.
What do Native Americans say about their origins? While some
do talk about long migrations, few of these stories mention coming across water
in boats or crossing ice fields. Take
for example the Indians in the Southeast and along the Mississippi River. They
lived in complex civilizations with sophisticated understandings of nature and
the cosmos. One of the creation narratives of the Choctaw mentioned a sacred
mound at Nanih Waiya that they call “Big Mother.” At this mound, the Great
Spirit created the first Choctaw who crawled out of the ground and into
daylight.[6] We
will explore the mound builders when we go to the Hopewell Culture National
Historic Park.
 |
| Hopewell Culture National Historic Park (http://worldheritageohio.org/hopewell-ceremonial-earthworks/) |
The origin stories of the Ancestral Puebloan people of the
Southwest revolve around humans emerging from a world that is underground,
where humans, animals, and spirits lived and talked with each other. From this
dark underworld, people came out of an emergence hole called a sipapu. Some tribes set out on long
journeys around the continent that lasted generations in search of the ideal
place to establish a permanent settlement. The wandering tribes lived in a
place for a while and then moved on. We will look at one of these intermediate
sites when we explore Chaco Culture National Historic Park.
 |
| Chaco Canyon (http://galleryhip.com/chaco-culture-national-historical-park-camping.html) |
The humans who sailed across the Pacific Ocean to land on the
Hawaiian Islands had their own origin narratives. Kane, the god of creation,
fashioned a man out of some rich, red earth and breathed life into him. Red
Earth Man then begat Wakea and his wife, Lihau’ula, who also were descended
from the gods Rangi Sky and Papa Earth. We will look at the indigenous peoples
of Hawai’i in the chapter on the Pu’u’uhonula o Honauhau National Historical
Park.
In many of the creation stories of the first peoples of
North America, humans came from the earth, not from elsewhere, and definitely
not across the Bering Land Bridge. In this brief accounting of creation
narratives, we have only focused on four out of the hundreds of tribes in
pre-contact America. Just as species evolved in unique ways in the isolated
lands of the Western Hemisphere, so too did their cultures and beliefs, and they
diverged from the peoples they left behind. The First Americans quickly spread
over thousands of miles of plains, deserts, mountains, forests, and whatever
other land forms they encountered. These humans also adapted to the new flora,
fauna, and environments, and in response, they created unique foods that
revolutionized diets, first in the Americas and then across the globe. From Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, we
will next travel to Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Ohio.
The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve was proclaimed a
national monument in 1978 and then a national preserve on December 2, 1980. It
comprises 2.7 million acres in northwestern Alaska.
 |
| Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (NPS photo: Katie Cullen) |
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
Box 220
Nome, Alaska 99762
(907) 443-2522
www.nps.bela.gov
[1]
West, American Beginnings¸149.
[2]
Madsen, Entering America, 141-146.
[3]
Madsen, Entering America,149-153.
[4]
Madsen, Entering America, 219.
[5]
Madsen, Entering America, 236.
[6]
Lee Irwin, Coming Down from Above:
Prophecy, Resistance, and Renewal in Native American Religions (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 32
