Late Glacial Climate Change and the Dispersal of Humans to Beringia: An Ecological Model

Summary

New studies of ancient as well as modern human genomes suggest that the immediate ancestors of Native Americans began to disperse from greater northeast Asia to Beringia after the last glacial maximum, roughly 20,000 cal BP. These new data require us to reconsider the lengthy incubation period predicted by the Beringian standstill model as well as the place of the Yana RHS site in our understanding of the peopling of Alaska. In this paper, we review the climatic, paleoenvironmental, genomic (human as well as other important mammal species), and archaeological records of eastern Siberia and Beringia to develop an ecological model of human dispersal. Did climate and environmental change during the early part of the late glacial encourage rapid northward expansion of human populations? How did human adaptations 20,000-13,000 cal BP further condition dispersal across the Bering land bridge to Alaska?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human Adaptations to Lateglacial and Early Holocene Climate and Environmental Changes: Towards a Trans-Atlantic Perspective (Part 2)

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