Contents
- What Was Beringia?
- How We Reconstructed the Beringian Environment
- 22,000 Years Ago — Why Beringia?
- 18,000 Years Ago — Why Did People Remain?
- Life in Beringia and the Standstill Hypothesis
- 16,000–14,600 Years Ago — The Eastern Land Opens
- 13,300–12,600 Years Ago — The Environmental Center Shifts East
- How the Beringian World Contracted and Disappeared
- From Environment to Ancestry
22,000 Years Ago: Why Beringia?
Around 22,000 years ago, why did human living territories shift toward Beringia?
To the west lay Chukotka, and farther west, the Yana region of northeastern Siberia. To the east lay Alaska. Together, these regions formed parts of a connected northern world.
Beringia was not the warmest or the most productive place in Eurasia. Several regions farther south or west were warmer and supported more vegetation.
But within the connected northern world, the comparison was very different.
See also:
- Beringia’s Exposed Land Area Changes After the LGMBeringia’s Exposed Land Area Changes After the LGM
A Warmer Northern Environment
At 22,000 years ago, Beringia’s annual mean temperature was about 12.7°C higher than Chukotka and about 19°C higher than Yana.
Monthly temperatures remained above freezing in Beringia for about 5.5 months. That was roughly 3.4 months longer than in Chukotka and 4.1 months longer than in Yana.
Extreme cold was also much shorter.
In Beringia, monthly temperatures remained below −20°C for less than one month. In Chukotka, that period lasted nearly five months. In Yana, nearly seven months.
This was more than a difference in how cold the air felt.
It changed the amount of fuel, fat, insulation, and stored food needed for winter. It also affected how long hunters could travel and how safely children and older people could remain in winter camps.
A Shorter Snow-covered Season
The snow-covered season in Beringia was roughly 100 days shorter than in the western northern regions.
The result was several additional months of exposed ground, open water, accessible vegetation, and usable travel routes.
For both animals and humans, this meant that important parts of the landscape could remain accessible for substantially longer periods of the year.
More Moisture During the Productive Season
Beringia was also wetter than the northern regions to the west.
During the later Last Glacial Maximum, Beringia received about 330 millimeters of precipitation per year. That was almost twice the amount in Chukotka and nearly three times the amount in Yana.
More precipitation did not automatically mean more food. Some of it fell as snow, and some remained seasonally unavailable.
More importantly, Beringia received about 120 millimeters of precipitation during its warmest three consecutive months, roughly twice the amount in Chukotka and Yana.
Warmth and moisture therefore arrived during the same short season.
That combination helped sustain a stronger productive base.
But it provided a stronger moisture base for rivers, wetlands, and lowland vegetation.