One of the First settlers of the Bering Strait Were the people of Yupik. This culture remains in the region and lived there before European colonization.
A small population of a few thousand people arrived in Bering from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum. It is believed that later they expanded to the rest of America, about 16,500 million years ago. This happened before the canal was covered with water about 11,000 years ago.
The Yupik were among the first settlers of the Bering Strait.
The Bering Strait is located between Russia and the United States, and borders the Arctic to the north. This strait is of great scientific importance as it is believed that humans migrated from Asia to North America via a land bridge. This region is also known as Beringia.
This hypothesis that humans came to America for the piece of land known as the Bering Strait is probably one of the theories most accepted by the scientific community. It is what is known as Asian theory .
During the ice ages, this area, including Siberia, was not icy; The snow was very light. Because of this, there was a bridge of land that stretched for hundreds of kilometers to the two sides between the continents.
Who were the first inhabitants of the Bering Strait?
The Bering Strait and theories about its population
Between 28,000 and 18,000 years ago, glaciers covered most of the Americas and northern Asia, blocking human migration to North America.
The region of Beringia, including the land bridge that is now submerged under the Bering Strait, was an area where there were shrubs, trees and tundra plants. Sediments of pollen, insects and other plants have been found under the Bering Sea.
In areas near Beringia, which are now regions of Alaska and Russia, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large animals walked freely there thousands of years ago.
This region had something that the other Arctic regions did not possess: wooded plants to make fires and animals to hunt. Once the glaciers melted, the inhabitants of this place had no choice but to move down the coastline into the interior of the continent to ice-free landscapes.
However, some scientists point out that this theory is uncertain as there is a lack of archaeological evidence at the site before 15,000 years. Although most of the evidence was erased when the Bering canal was flooded, experts point out that if this region had had inhabitants there would have been remains of settlements.
Yupik people
Yupik people are the largest group of Alaska natives. Currently the majority of Yupik, United States. Some are located in Alaska, while a small group lives in Russia. Formerly they lived in the region of Beringia. The Yupik speak a yup'ik language of central Alaska, a variant of the Esquimo-Aleute languages.
The common ancestors of the Eskimos and the Aleutes have their origin in the east of Siberia. Archaeologists believe they came to Bering thousands of years ago. They have recently conducted research on the blood type of Yupik people who have been confirmed by linguistic and DNA .
These findings suggest that the ancestors of Native Americans They arrived in North America before the ancestors of the Eskimos and Aleutes.
It seems that there were several waves of migration from Siberia to America via the Bering Bridge when it was exposed during glacial periods between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago. The Yupik's ancestors had settled along the coastal areas that would later become Alaska.
There were also migrations along coastal rivers along several nearby regions. The Yupik of Siberia could represent a migration of the Eskimo people to Siberia from Alaska.
The Yupik include Aboriginal groups in Alaska and Russia. Many Eskimos and Inuit include Alutiq, Central Alaska yup'ik and Siberian yupik.
Native American Ancestors
The ancestors of Native Americans may have lived in Bering for about 10,000,000 years before expanding to the American continent. New scientific studies on genetic data have shown that Native Americans diverged from their Asian ancestors a few thousand years ago.
Evidence also suggests that the land in the Bering Strait had pasture so cattle could eat. During the years when there was no ice, this strait was dry land.
There is also evidence that branches and wood were burned for heat. This means that humans had enough food and a decent environment to survive.
Ancient theories suggest that the Asian ancestors of the natives of the north and south of America crossed the Strait of Bering some 15,000 years ago and then colonized the continent.
However, recent findings have shown that almost none of the Native American tribes have genetic mutations in common with Asians. This indicates that a population remained isolated from its Asian ancestors for thousands of years before spreading to the American continent.
Genetic evidence points to this theory. Scientists recovered remains of a human skeleton near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. It is estimated that these remains are from the end of the stone age.
The genetic comparison of this skeleton with the Native Americans demonstrated that there is no direct link between Asians and them. So it is presumed that there was a period where they diverged.
These people are called paleo Indians and are the direct ancestors of almost all Native Americans and South Americans.
This would be a valid explanation as to why Native Americans are so different from people in northeastern Asia. If this theory is true, they are different because the first inhabitants who crossed the Bering Strait were there for about 15,000 years. This is enough time for them to mutate and create a genealogy different from their ancestors.
References
- Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans (2017). Plos Genetic. Retrieved from ncbi.com.
- Humans May Have Been Stuck on Bering Strait for 10,000 Years (2014) History. Retrieved from livescience.com.
- First Americans Lived on Bering Land Bridge for Thousands of Years (2014) Archeology & Paleontology. Retrieved from theconversation.com.
- What is Beringia? National Park Service. United States Department of Interior. Retrieved from nps.gov.
- Human Ecology of Beringia. (2007) Columbia University Press. Retrieved from columbia.edu.
- The Late Pleistocene Dispersal of Modern Humans in the Americas. (2008). Retrieved from sciencemag.com.
- Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas (2008) Retrieved from ncbi.nlh.gov.