Scientists Suggest An Ice Wall Blocked The First Americans From Using The Bering Land Bridge
National Oceanic and Atmospheric AssociationEven at its lowest point, the massive ice wall would have still been over 1,000 feet tall.
How did early humans first migrate to the Americas? For a long time, researchers believed that they crossed the Bering Land Bridge, a piece of land that once connected Asia and America. But a study published in 2022 suggested that ancient people would have been impeded by an enormous ice wall that was taller than the Empire State Building.
Because the so-called Beringia ice wall melted some 13,800 years ago, and researchers have found evidence of human activity in the Americas before that, the study led by Oregon State University geologist and archaeologist Jorie Clark suggests that early people came to the Americas another way.
Clark and his team used geological sampling to determine that the Bering Land Bridge would have been blocked by an ice wall that “may have been 1,500 to 3,000 feet high.” Until that ice melted, the crucial corridor would have been completely impossible for ancient people to traverse.
Since there’s evidence of earlier human activity in the Americas, including 23,000-year-old footprints found in New Mexico, Clark hypothesized that humans had found another way to reach the continents, perhaps by boat.
But not everyone accepted this exciting new theory. Some experts believed that the existence of the ice wall merely meant that people had arrived before it developed and blocked the passageway.
