Doesn’t Anyone Understand the Untenable Claims About Berangia? Part I

The news out of Harvard University last year was that “An exhaustive study of DNA taken from dozens of Native American groups that span from Canada to the tip of South America is helping to settle a question that has long divided scientists: When people arrived in the Americas more than 15,000 years ago, the Harvard-led research shows, they came in successive waves, not all at once.”

The 58-mile-wide Bering Strait separating Alaska and Siberia

The analysis published last July reveals that while one population of “First Americans” crossed a land bridge from Siberia during the last Ice Age, about 15000 to 12000 B.C., giving rise to most Native Americans, there were at least two subsequent migrations. These people mixed with the founding group later, leaving traces of their genes in the DNA of present-day populations in Alaska, Greenland, and Canada.

Beringia, or better known as the Bering Land Bridge, sometimes called the Siberian Land Bridge, is a so-called, hypothetical area of land, now about 165 feet beneath the freezing waters of the Bering Strait, that some scientists claim was exposed due to the lowering of sea level during the last Glacial Period, which is said to have ended 12,500 years ago.

The Bering Strait is a narrowing of the sea between Cape Dezhnev (Dezhnyov), Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent, and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, the westernmost point of the American continent, slightly south of the polar circle. The strait is approximately 58 miles wide, with a depth of 165 feet (at its lowest point) and connects the Chukchi Sea, which is part of the Arctic Ocean, in the north with the Bering Sea, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, in the south.

However, according to Robert F. Spielhagen, et al, in "Arctic Ocean deep-sea record of northern Eurasian ice sheet history," Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol 23, 2004, pp 1455–83, “the Arctic Ocean between the huge ice sheets of America and Eurasia was not frozen throughout, but like today probably was only covered by relatively shallow ice, subject to seasonal changes and riddled with iceberg calving from the surrounding ice sheets, based on the sediment composition retrieved from deep-sea cores there must even have been times of seasonally open waters.”

Amidst a solid pack of ice covering thousands of square miles, the scientists claim an area in Beringia would not only be above water, but unencumbered by the ice sheets everywhere else; but even so, people would have had to leave the preferred area to travel across sheets of ice for some 2000 miles to reach dry land in a warmer clime--it is simply an untenable hypothesis
The idea of people crossing this hypothetical land bridge is an outgrowth of belief in the bridge itself, a theoretical understanding of biogeographical data showing connections between species on the Asian and North American continents, such as saber-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, various ungulates and plants were believed to have existed on both continents around the last ice age. Biogeography looks at phytogeography (the past and present distribution of plants) and zoogeography (the past and present distribution of animals), with historical biogeography called paleobiogeography, which studies the past distributions of species, and their evolutionary history. For the most part, it is based on hypothesis about species and why they developed, migrated, and exist in certain ways.

Thus, when similar human DNA was found in both Siberia, Alaska and Greenland, the giant leap of faith of these scientists decided it had to be connected via a cross-over of a land bridge that cannot be factually shown to have existed even with modern technology. The existence of such a land bridge is only a belief—an example is stated by scientists: “The Bering Land Bridge is believed to have existed through numerous ice ages- from earlier ones it is thought around 35,000 years ago to more recent ice ages around 22,000-7,000 years ago. Most recently it is believed that the strait between Siberia and Alaska became dry land about 13,500 B.C., and believed that 4000 B.C., the strait was again closed due to a believed warming climate and rising sea levels. It is believed that during the latter period, the coastlines of eastern Siberia and Alaska developed roughly the same shapes they have today” (emphasis mine).

Top: Cape Dezhnev, Russia (Siberian side of the land bridge area); Bottom: Just inland from Cape Dezhnev (the cape is seen in the background). A most inhospitable land of ice and rock

Cape Prince Wales, the westernmost point of the North American Continent, and the eastern side of the so-called Land Bridge. It is a formidable area of ice, with winter temperatures ranging from -10 to 6 °F. Annual precipitation averages 10 inches, with 35 inches of snow. Frequent fog, wind, and blizzards limit access to this area--there are no roads leading to the village of Wales shown in the distance

It is also believed that the land bridge was not glaciated, even though it was during the glacial period, and it is believed that precipitation was light, therefore it is believed that grasslands were most common on the Bering Land Bridge itself and for hundreds of miles into the Asian and North American continents—again, this is during the glacial period that covered this area! It is also believed that there were very few trees and all vegetation consisted of grasses and low-lying plants and shrubs on a small patch of land that had for milennia been submerged far beneath ocean sea water. These scientists today point to the region surrounding what remains of Beringia in northwestern Alaska and eastern Siberia to show that it still features grasslands with very few trees--but that is misleading since the areas adjoining the ocean where any such land bridge would have been is thick ice as shown in the pictures above. Of course, nothing can be proven or disproven that existed or didn't exist in this area 12000 to 15000 years ago--it is all a typical scientific hypothesis, more correctly called a guess.

The proposed map by scientists showing their belief in a migration across the hypothetical Bering Land Bridge, and down into South America or across into Greenland

What the map doesn’t show (see the previous post for the complete migration map) is that this migration across the Land Bridge began in central Africa, crossed into Europe, went east to China, then north into Siberia before reaching the land bridge—a migration of about 7000 miles. The last half of that, about 3500 miles, into ever-increasing colder and colder climates. Consequently, it has to be asked,
"What would prompt any group of people to leave warm, healthy and safe climates to travel into forbidding colder and colder climes of ice and snow?" Scientists claim these people were following Woolley Mammoth herds--however, nobody follows a herd into forbidding climes when there are plenty of animal herds in the warmer climes. It is simply an untenable belief that cannot be supported by reason or fact!

The utterly preposterous idea of a huge group of people voluntarily choosing to leave a warm climate and travel thousands of miles into a freezing climate not conducive to humans, cross a solid ice area for some 100 miles to reach another freezing cold area, before traveling into a warmer climate--a distance from the land bridge to a warmer climate southward would be approximately 2000 miles before reaching the present-day northern border of the State of Washington in the U.S. Or or as the claims of DNA findings would mean some of these people traveled clear across northern Alaska and Canada, and, as the DNA trail leads into Greenland, some would have had to travel from the land bridge 3000 miles eastward and then, for some unknown reason, cross a 225-mile sea to reach Greenland as the map below shows, which itself is mostly ice, is beyond imagination.

Note the glaciation of Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland during the time the scientists claim people migrated across a land bridge into Alaska, then across Canada to Greenland

This leads to an interesting evaluation: on the one hand we have scientists who claim people migrated across Alaska and Canada to Greenland at a time, on the other hand, when other scientists claim this entire area was covered with ice-age glaciation. That of course presents a problem. But just one problem out of many.

(See the next post, “Doesn’t Anyone Understand the Untenable Claims About Beringia? Part II, to show more of the problems the two concepts mentioned in this post regarding the Beringia Land Bridge, and the migration over it during the Ice Age glaciation of these lands)