Beringia

Beringia is the region spanning northeastern Asia and northwestern North America, including the land bridge exposed when sea levels fell during glacial periods.

Bering Land Bridge: A land connection between Siberia and Alaska exposed when sea level fell during glacial periods. It formed the central corridor joining Beringia’s Asian and North American sides.
Wisconsin Glaciation: The North American name for the last glacial period, when continental ice sheets expanded across much of Canada. Its ice sheets helped lower global sea levels and expose Beringia.
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: The diverse peoples descended from societies that inhabited the Americas before European colonization. Many population histories trace ancestral migrations through Beringia.
Peopling of the Americas: The process by which human populations first entered and spread through the American continents. Beringia is central to explaining routes and timing of the earliest migrations.
Coastal Migration Theory: A model proposing that early migrants entered the Americas by traveling along the Pacific coast. It contrasts with routes that depend chiefly on an inland corridor through Beringia.
Last Glacial Maximum: The interval when global ice sheets reached their greatest extent during the last glacial period, about 26,000–19,000 years ago. Low sea levels during this interval exposed the land bridge.
Beringian Standstill Hypothesis: A hypothesis that ancestral Indigenous American populations remained isolated in Beringia for thousands of years before dispersing south. It proposes a period of human isolation within the region before migration into the Americas.
Yupik Peoples: Indigenous peoples of coastal regions of Alaska and the Russian Far East, with related languages and cultural traditions. Their homelands span the modern regions on either side of the Bering Strait.
Paleoecology: The study of past ecosystems using evidence such as fossils, sediments, and ancient DNA. Beringian deposits reconstruct an unusual ice-age ecosystem and its changes.
Ice-Free Corridor: A route between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that opened in western Canada late in the last glaciation. Its availability is distinct from the earlier exposure of Beringia and affects migration-route debates.

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