Research
An ancient camp in Alaska holds amazing clues about how the first people traveled all the way to North America
Earth.com · By Eric Ralls ·
The Brief
- An ancient camp has been found on a bluff above the Tanana River in interior Alaska.
- Some of the people who crossed the Bering Land Bridge stopped and stayed there for a time instead of only passing through.
- They built a shelter and dug a cooking oven at the site.
Why it matters
The find suggests early migrants sometimes settled temporarily along their route, which complicates the common picture of the Bering Land Bridge as a simple highway.
Who’s affected
- archaeologists and paleoanthropologists
- readers interested in early human migration to the Americas
- #archaeology
- #alaska
- #bering land bridge
- #human migration
- #ice age
The Bering Land Bridge is usually described as a temporary highway that Ice Age hunters walked across to get to the Americas. On a bluff above the Tanana River in interior Alaska, though, some of those people stopped and stayed a while. They put up a shelter, dug a cooking oven…