Beringia today

The Bering Strait a relatively shallow water body linking the Arctic Sea with the Pacific Ocean and separating the continents of Asia and North America at their closest point (less than 90 Km). During the last glacial age, some 20,000 – 25,000 years ago a lot of sea water was concentrated in the polar ice caps and therefore the mean sea level was more than 100 meters lower than today, thus exposing, in this area, a large tract of land called Bering Land Bridge or Beringia.

Beringia had a significant role in the human history since it is believed to have enabled human migration to the Americas from Asia. It is still a matter of debate between anthropologists if there was a single main migration of Siberian people across the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago or the continent was gradually populated in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago. In addition there is evidence of new groups of Asian migrants entering Alaska later on (Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut respectively 8,000 and 4,000 years ago) after the sea level rise. As can be seen in the satellite images the strait waters are completely frozen during winter and a crossing by foot is feasible (with some risk).

The natural colour image taken by Aqua satellite shows the strait in the darkness of arctic winter (upper center-left). The false colour image highlights snow and sea ice (light blue). The frozen sea has approximately the same extent of the old Beringia.



Satellite: AQUA (NASA)
Sensor: MODIS
Spatial resolution: 500 m.
Data: NASA GSFC