Beringia, also called Bering Land Bridge, any in a series of landforms that once existed periodically and in various configurations between northeastern Asia and northwestern North America and that were associated with periods of worldwide glaciation and subsequent lowering of sea levels.

The presence of 12,000-year-old fluted points at Serpentine has potential to change our understanding of early human migration in North America. Lowered sea levels during the last Ice Age exposed dry land between Asia and the Americas, creating the Bering Land Bridge.

Here’s What It Looked Like 18,000 Years Ago. In fact, the map shows all of Beringia — the sprawling region that includes parts of Russia, known as western Beringia; Alaska, called eastern Beringia; and the ancient land bridge that connected the two. …

This map shows how a land bridge connected the continents of Asia and North America when the most recent ice age lowered sea levels.

Jules Marcou

Working with botanists, archeologists and other scientific specialists in the 1950s and ’60s, Hopkins promoted the theory that the land bridge linked Asia and North America and allowed humans, animals and plant communities to migrate some 12,000 years ago.

One theory suggested the migration of Norsemen across Greenland into North America. Instead, he believed that hunters from Asia had crossed into North America via a land bridge or narrow strait located far to the north. He thought the land bridge was still in existence during his lifetime.

The Bering Land Bridge also served as a crossing point for animals other than humans during the Pleistocene. Making the journey with their hunters were muskox, lemmings, and some of the big Pleistocene animals, including mammoths.

It is the heat from these fires that kept these intrepid hunter-gatherers alive through the bitter cold of Arctic winter nights. The last ice age ended and the land bridge began to disappear beneath the sea, some 13,000 years ago.

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