Courtesy Mikkel Winther Pedersen
Looking south through what was once the “ice-free corridor” in present-day Canada. A new study suggests that humans couldn’t have traversed through the corridor until about 12,600 years ago, thus bringing about the end of the Bering Strait Theory.
Indians of all Nations have long looked askance at the Bering Strait Theory, but as usual, most people haven’t been terribly interested in what Indians have to say about anything, if they are aware of Indians saying anything in the first place.
Two new studies have now, finally, put an end to the long-held theory that the Americas were populated by ancient peoples who walked across the Bering Strait land-bridge from Asia approximately 15,000 years ago. Because much of Canada was then under a sheet of ice, it had long been hypothesised that an “ice-free corridor” might have allowed small groups through from Beringia, some of which was ice-free. One study published in the journal Nature, entitled “Postglacial Viability and Colonization in North America’s Ice-Free Corridor” found that the corridor was incapable of sustaining human life until about 12,600 years ago, or well after the continent had already been settled.
An international team of researchers “obtained radiocarbon dates, pollen, macrofossils and metagenomic DNA from lake sediment cores” from nine former lake beds in British Columbia, where the Laurentide and Cordellian ice sheets split apart. Using a technique called “shotgun sequencing,” the team had to sequence every bit of DNA in a clump of organic matter in order to distinguish between the jumbled strands of DNA. They then matched the results to a database of known genomes to differentiate the organisms. Using this data they reconstructed how and when different flora and fauna emerged from the once ice-covered landscape. According to Mikkel Pedersen, a Ph.D. student at the Center for Geogenetics, University of Copenhagen, in the deepest layers, from 13,000 years ago, “the land was completely naked and barren.”
“What nobody has looked at is when the corridor became biologically viable,” noted study co-author, Professor Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the Centre for GeoGenetics and also the Department of Zoology, the University of Cambridge. “The bottom line is that even though the physical corridor was open by 13,000 years ago, it was several hundred years before it was possible to use it.” In Willerslev’s view, “that means that the first people entering what is now the U.S., Central and South America must have taken a different route.”
A second study, “Bison Phylogeography Constrains Dispersal and Viability of the Ice Free Corridor in Western Canada,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined ancient mitochondrial DNA from bison fossils to “determine the chronology for when the corridor was open and viable for biotic dispersals” and found that the corridor was potentially a viable route for bison to travel through about 13,000 years ago, or slightly earlier than the Nature study.
Geologists had long known that the towering icecaps were a formidable barrier to migration from Asia to the Americas between 26,000 to 10,000 years ago. Thus the discovery in 1932 of the Clovis spear points, believed at that time to be about 10,000 years old, presented a problem, given the overwhelming presumption of the day that the ancient Indians had walked over from Asia about that time. In 1933, the Canadian geologist William Alfred Johnston proposed that when the glaciers began melting, they broke into two massive sheets long before completely disappearing, and between these two ice sheets people might have been able to walk through, an idea dubbed the “ice-free corridor” by Swedish-American geologist Ernst Antevs two years later.
Archaeologists then seized on the idea of a passageway to uphold the tenuous notion that Indians had arrived to the continent relatively recently, until such belief became a matter of faith. Given the recent discoveries that place Indians in the Americas at least 14,000 years ago, both studies now finally lay to rest the ice-free corridor theory. As Willerslev points out, “The school book story that most of us are used to doesn’t seem to be supported.” The new school book story is that the Indians migrated in boats down along the Pacific coast around 15,000 years ago. How long that theory will hold up remains to be seen.
Alex Ewen’s article is at ICTMN. Alex Ewen has an in-depth, six part series about this, started in 2014. Excellent reading for everyone, especially as the only people who are giving this coverage, let alone front page coverage, are Indian publications. It would be nice to see this as a non-buried story in msm publications.
An amateur-archaeologist neighbor of mine, citing evidence of humans in Florida >10K years ago, proposes the Americas were settled by Ice Age migrants island-hopping across the north Atlantic well before then.
If the Beringia/last-ice-age theory can’t account for the facts, then into the trashcan with it -- but I cringe to think of some of the alternatives likely to pop up. Who will be the next Erich von Däniken or Joseph Smith?
IANAA, but could there have been multiple waves of settlement?
Ice Swimmer:
No idea. This is seriously outside of my knowledge.
Pierce:
Now you know how Indians have felt about that stupid Bering Strait business.
What do the Indians think?
Marcus:
That the Bering Strait theory was just a way to
confirmjustify that Indians aren’t actually Indians, that we’re all just Asians, and we got here late, so you know, all that land in the Americas, we weren’t really truly settled on it for ages on end before the colonial machine decided they wanted it.Ever since it was first proposed, Indians have been shaking their heads, saying no.
We know from DNA testing Amerindians came from Asia. It appears there were multiple pathways and multiple migrations which confuse the issue.
The latest best hypothesis is the coastal migration for the earliest migrants.
I think it will take a while to sort everything out.
Nerd:
That’s contested too, because there are DNA similarities among all humans. But that’s for another day, after all, it only took 80 something years to discredit a bad theory. I know what the current school story is, but that hasn’t been confirmed in any way, and where Indians are concerned, there’s a notable lack of people actually trying for the truth. It’s usually more about white justification than anything else.
IceSwimmer
I’m having a hard time answering this largely because there’s a nasty history with the idea of “settlement” and using it to de-legitimize Indigenous peoples. The evidence we have points to a great deal of diversity between and within Nations, which should be interpreted very carefully. Blood Types and Stereotypes:
That’s from part six in a six part article series on ICTMN. I’d recommend reading the whole incredibly long, wonderfully detailed series if you’re curious about where the Bering Strait theory came from and how very obviously wrong it’s been for a long time.
TMM:
Thank you for coming to the rescue of my space cadet self. I had meant to include that link in the OP. I’m still hungover from a migraine from hell yesterday, I’m about -1 on the functioning scale.
I’ve been doing archaeology in Canada for over 40 years.
This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen someone declare the death of the concept of the ice-free corridor.
.
is made of straw.
And insulting.
Chigau:
I don’t think it is. The Bering Strait theory has been held up for years as justification for the Indian genocide, and it’s been taught as fact for years on end.
The Mellow Monkey @ 8
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was a dirty word. Would “migration into” have been better?
Ice Swimmer @ 12
I’m not even sure if it would speciically bother anyone other than me, so no apology necessary! I’m just cautious about how I word things, because of the history of justifications like Caine mentions above.
The thing is there’s several ways to determine ancestry by DNA, and all of the categories overlap quite a bit -- the best they can do (right now) is approximate, via statistics. And because they don’t always have great sample sizes, the accuracy of those statistics can be called into question. I’m going to read the series TMM linked to, because this is basically an offshoot of what my job is, and I haven’t been keeping up with the newest stuff (some, but that’s a discussion for a different time).
I mean, people may have come over during the ice-free time of the Bering Strait, but I highly doubt they were the first people to get to North America; plus I’m a firm believer in the innovative capacity of the human brain -- meaning that I do believe that humans came to North (and South) America in several waves via various methods, some of which may not be conducive to leaving a good archeological trail (like pretty much any shoreline civilization -- it can be a real hit-or-miss). So I love it when accepted theories (even if only popularly accepted) get disproved, because (a) it means there’s still so much more to learn and (b) it really speaks to the ingenuity of humans in getting to new places (or even surviving in the old ones. This second paragraph is merely my opinion, but I have no real anthropological background so I may just be talking out of my ass. Off to read.
OK, I’m not sure I understand the science-politics interaction of the situation. What difference does it make if Indians arrived 10K years ago, 20K or 300K years ago, when anyone else arrived 0.5K years ago (except for the Vikings at 1K years ago, probably with no lasting progeny)?
Indians had to have arrived from somewhere. Maybe their ancestors were related to multiple current populations, such that it wasn’t a single wave of migration (IIRC linguists have claimed 3 waves at some point). But in any case, they parted ways with whichever population(s) those were way back when. They are no more ‘Asians’ than Europeans are ‘Africans’ (or Asians, with all those Indo-Europeans invaders).
That the Bering Strait theory was just a way to confirm justify that Indians aren’t actually Indians, that we’re all just Asians, and we got here late, so you know, all that land in the Americas, we weren’t really truly settled on it for ages on end before the colonial machine decided they wanted it.
Ah, right.
No.
anat @ 15:
It matters because the Clovis find in the ’30s, and the Bering theory have been used, for decades, to prop up the racism the U.S. is founded on. A lot of people think that started with slavery, but it didn’t. It started with the colonial invasion and brutal attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples. White people have been very enamored of the Bering theory, because it confirms their bias, justifies the genocide, and declares all Indigenous people to be liars about their history here. “See, you haven’t been here that long, and you’re just Asians.” and so forth.
The implicit and overt racism towards NDNs runs very, very deep. There’s no people as despised as Indians are, and it doesn’t much matter what the specific subject or issue may be, it will be replete not only with current bigotry and racism, but also the echoes of hundreds of years of bigotry, fear, and hate. This particular issue, does it matter much at all to non-Indians? Nope. Does it matter to us? Yes, very much.
How much doesn’t it matter to non-Indians? As I noted in the OP, there’s next to no coverage of this story anywhere except Indian publications, and Alex Ewen’s in depth look at this has been going on for two years. Every Indian paper I follow (Indian Country Today Media Network, Indian Country Today, The Lakota Country Times, Native News Online, Indianz.com, to name a few) have covered this story. Main stream media? Rick tells me it was buried way down on Yahoo news.
Hundreds of people have viewed this post. Out of those, 5 people have clicked over to read Alex’s 6 part series. It’s an exercise in futility, getting people to click over to an Indian publication and read. If I wanted to kill this blog, all I’d have to do is rename it “Indian Country something”, and it would die a very quick death. People do not want to know, they do not want to help. They want to understand even less.
And yeah, I know, not all non-Indians. I know that, all Indians know that, but it sure as hell feels that way too much of the time.
I think scientific theories and the tradition of flimsy political excuses for conquest, persecution and genocide are separate issues, even if they are connected with bias and racism. The latter is more pernicious and if nothing based on facts exists, lies and provocations will ensue.
I hope science is much more rigorously fact-based.
Ice Swimmer:
They aren’t though, not if you take a good look at history. Look at all the scientific theories which shored up eugenics, and racism of all kinds. People still quote the scientific theories, now discredited, that state black people are intellectually inferior. That sort of thing may go on with less frequency now, but it still goes on.
Caine, I wasn’t aware of this aspect of colonist Native American interaction. Seems pretty bizarre to think even 10,000 yrs ago was “recent”. By that logic, the indigenous people here in NZ, who arrived about 600 yrs ago, must have arrived after the settlers!!!
I am fantastically busy at the moment, but I have bookmarked the link, and will follow up when I get a chance.
Caine, I hear you. What I see is that people who think 10K years are ‘recent’ compared to 0.5K years aren’t using any kind of rationality to excuse their racism. So why would an age of 20K or 50K or any other change their minds?
The problem with the “Bering Strait theory” is that for years it seems to have slowed down inquiry into other hypotheses. I am acquainted with Jon Erlandson, and he proposes at least some populations came from or expanded via boat. It is likely -- I had read somewhere that ancient Australians had to reach the continent 50K years ago via boat because even during glacial maximum, Australia was not connected to other landmasses via a land bridge.
The thing is, it is a popular refrain among internet commenters and angry editorial letter writers that Indians aren’t really indigenous. Sometimes it’s because we came from Asia, but a popular theme I see these days is basically “Why should Indians have special rights we all came from Africa”. They resent the fact that many tribes still retain treaty rights in regards to hunting and fishing, or religious sites, etc. They resent that Reservations still exist, they resent that tribal governments still exist. Yes, Homo sapiens did evolve in Africa but in regards to human cultures and nations ‘indigenous’ is not synonymous with ‘evolved on that very spot’.
Just today, on an innocent lil’ article about a cache of stone tools in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, there was an angry commenter bloviating that “Indians” are just as “evil as whites” [his phrasing] because Kalapuyans practiced slavery. An interesting justification for genocide -- if that is a justification, how come no one proposed treating southern whites just like Indians?
My personal hypothesis why people come up with all these weird narratives painting Indians as ‘savages’ -- they still feel, in 2016, that colonization and genocide must be justified in some way and that their pioneer ancestors and/or “Founding Fathers” were really good people with pure, wonderful motives. They cannot stand to include any bad things or tragedies or horrors to be a part of the shiny happy narrative of ‘Merika!
Patricia Phillips @ 22
Now I understand a bit better, what’s the rhetorical connection between modern white supremacism and the Bering Strait theory.
Patricia @ 22:
Word. And no one upsets that narrative more than we do. Oh, I have really been enjoying your book!
Patricia Phillips @ 22
Does this come from teaching history as the patriotic religion/indoctrination of Great Achievements by Great Men, generation after generation (unless the history teacher happens to be a grouchy contrarian)?
Ice Swimmer @ 25:
It’s standard white-washed history, as taught in the States. Nothing factual about Indians is taught at all, unless there has been a specific, concerted effort to do so. This was brought up, yet again, in this article:
@Caine -- glad you are enjoying the book!
Hmm…Sen. McCoy has a good point, I think, about education. If people don’t understand history, they won’t understand why tribes still have lands and governments, and why there is a unique relationship between tribes and the Federal Gov’t today. Even people in state and federal government positions (and sometimes US Supreme Court justices) don’t grasp this as a basic fact. Case in point right now, the Goldwater Institute of AZ is trying to litigate against ICWA on the grounds that it is an ‘unfair’ race-based law, rather than acknowledging that tribes have governments with their own legal systems & should not be ignored by state governments. Hm, another case that springs to mind is about an article I saw recently (thru Indianz.com I think) about the Uintah reservation in Utah -- for the 7th time (SEVEN!!!!) in the last 30 years ago the state of UT has litigated over the Uintah reservation boundaries, and UT has lost all 7 times. But they refuse to acknowledge that, and keep fighting the same battle over and over. I am sure round 8 will come along. Sigh.
Patricia @ 27:
Yeah, they do a good job keeping up, especially Turtle Talk and Roundhouse Talk. One lawsuit after another.
I do agree that proper education is to the benefit of all, but it takes specific legislation just for actual history to be taught, along with tribe specific or general education about Indigenous people. Without someone in each state, and each school district in each state, that only happens in a few schools sprinkled around the U.S. The rest of the kids are taught the same old whitewash version, and think all the cowboys and Indian stuff represents the truth. So, we remain either the bad guys, or the noble savages. I have met so many people who have been astonished that Indians are still alive. That there’s a lack of education is an understatement.
“The Bering Strait theory has been held up for years as justification for the Indian genocide,”
Now I’m just a stupid Dutchman, but just like Anat I don’t get this. Or rather I think the American racists who use BSt for the Indian genocide are utterly stupid. So I predict that dismissing the BSt only will lead to another stupid jusitification.
“Indians aren’t really indigenous.”
Well, great. Neither are we Dutchies then. The Netherlands were largely uninhabited between 400 and 550 CE. Just like the Americas 10 000-15 000 years ago.
“It’s standard white-washed history”
Now that’s something I understand. At primary school I wasn’t taught about slavery in Suriname and the genocide on the Banda Islands either.
“we remain either the bad guys, or the noble savages”
That’s something I understand as well. If you are interested how Dutchies and Germans look at the Indian genocide you must read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May
All his books are about the same, so this one suffices:
https://www.amazon.com/Winnetou-Unabridged-2008-translation/dp/0981650406
There were Neanderthals on Crete 70,000 years ago. They must have got there by boat. There is evidence of cattle on Corfu from 12,000 years ago -- they didnt swim there.
Imaging walking a hundred miles carrying your food and shelter. Now imagine sitting in a large raft or boat with a crude sail and many many provisions on board. You can catch more food over the side and easily get on shallow shores to look around, collect water etc -- laziness is the true mother of invention.