Beringia

Beringia is the region of land that once connected the continents of Asia and North America during periods of lower sea levels, most notably at the Last Glacial Maximum around 20,000 years ago. The area includes the modern Bering Strait and the continental shelf that now lies below the water between Siberia and Alaska. When sea levels fell by roughly 120 meters during the last ice age, a wide corridor of exposed land stretched for more than 2,000 kilometers in some places, connecting the tundra and steppe landscapes of both continents.

The flooded zone that is Beringia today supported a diverse megafaunal community, including mammoths, mastodons, giant hares, and various ungulates, which became isolated from their Eurasian and North American relatives by the rising sea retainer. Simultaneously, the corridor provided a migration route for early humans. Archaeological sites in Southeast Alaska, the Yukon, and western Canada show evidence of human activity that dates to at least 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, suggesting that Homo sapiens used the land bridge to reach what would become the Americas. The timing and number of migrations remain contested, but genetic data support the idea that a single migration source contributed to the founding of Native American populations.

The disappearance of Beringia around 11,000 years ago, caused by meltwater oceans and the subsequent rise in sea levels, cut the connection and isolated the faunal and human populations on each side. These partitions have left measurable differences in genetics and ecology between northern Eurasian and North American species. Modern marine geology, sediment cores, and satellite imagery continue to reveal the extent and geological history of this ancient corridor. The legacy of Beringia thus remains a central theme in studies of prehistory, climate change, and Earth’s biogeographical evolution.