Bering Land Bridge

The Bering Land Bridge was an exposed land connection between northeastern Asia and northwestern North America during periods of low sea level, especially the Pleistocene.

Beringia: A Pleistocene region spanning northeastern Asia, the exposed Bering shelf, and northwestern North America. The land bridge formed the central connection within this larger region.
Peopling of the Americas: The migration and settlement of the Americas by human populations before European colonization. The bridge and adjacent Beringia are central to leading accounts of ancestral movement into the Americas.
Ice age: A prolonged interval in which global temperatures fall and large ice sheets expand. Repeated ice ages lowered sea levels enough to uncover the Bering shelf.
Bluefish Caves: A group of archaeological caves in Yukon containing evidence of human activity during the Late Pleistocene. Finds there contribute to debates about early human presence in eastern Beringia.
Coastal migration theory: The hypothesis that early peoples entered the Americas by traveling along the Pacific coast. It offers a route into the Americas distinct from movement through an inland corridor.
Bering Strait: A marine strait between Alaska and northeastern Siberia connecting the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Rising seas flooded the land bridge and established this strait.
Beringian standstill hypothesis: A hypothesis that ancestral Indigenous American populations remained isolated in Beringia for an extended period before spreading south. It proposes a period of population isolation in the region around the land bridge.
Glacial period: A colder interval within an ice age when glaciers and ice sheets expand. Glacial growth stored ocean water on land and helped expose the bridge.
Swan Point: An archaeological site in central Alaska with evidence of human occupation dating to the Late Pleistocene. Its early occupation layers document people living in Beringia.
Ice-Free Corridor: A route between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that opened in western Canada during deglaciation. Its timing determines whether it could have served as an early southward route from Beringia.

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