“Native American oral traditions have long been ignored and passed off as superstitious myths” (Ehecatl).
The Bering Strait Theory or Land Bridge Theory is one that has made with great assumption and is one that has been followed up by great controversy and contention. “According to the New World migration model, a migration of humans from Eurasia to the Americas took place via Beringia, a land bridge which connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait. The most recent point at which this migration could have taken place is c. 12,000 years ago, with the earliest period remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. These early Paleo-Indians soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living there since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts” (Horses). The most interesting fact of this theory is that it has been passed off as fact being published in numerous texts and circulated to the masses propagating the ideal that everyone is an immigrant to this land which attempts to excuse the genocide and other atrocities that Europeans have committed since the time of early contact. By claiming that everyone is immigrants would diminish the claim that Natives have to the land.
“According to Jeffrey Goodman, “the host of more or less fanciful theories on Indian origins put forth over the past four hundred years exemplifies a still-discernible tendency to draw large, often misrepresentative conclusions about Indians from an inadequate store of facts.” These fanciful theories are a result of the method that anthropologists employ: they begin research with a pre-conceived notion of what they will find and where their discoveries will fit into human history. The absurdity of this method is apparent when archaeologists argue that the Bering Strait theory is valid. Not only are their arguments illogical, they contradict the plethora of evidence that has been found” (Ehecatl).
“The exact epoch and route is still a matter of controversy, as is whether it happened at all. Until recently there was a consensus among anthropologists that the alleged migrants crossed the strait 12,000 years ago via the Bering Land Bridge which existed during the last ice age (which occurred 26,000 to 11,000 years ago), and that they followed an inland route through Alaska and Canada that had just been freed of its ice cover. There are a number of difficulties in this theory - in particular, growing evidence of human presence in Brazil and Chile 11,500 years ago or earlier. Thus other possibilities, not necessarily exclusive, have been suggested. The migrants may have crossed the land bridge several millennia earlier and followed a coastal route, thus avoiding the ice-covered interior. They may have been seafaring people who moved along the coast, a theory disputed due to the relative lack of seafaring skills of peoples of this time period. The crossing of the Bering Land Bridge may have occurred during the previous ice age, around 37,000 years ago. This is also supported by the archaeology dating of some sites in South America prior to the previously assumed date of 1214,000 years ago. A more radical alternative is that the Siberians were preceded by migrants from Oceania, who arrived either by sailing across the Pacific Ocean or by following the land route through Beringia at a much earlier date. Proponents of this theory claim that the oldest human remains in South America and in Baja California show distinctive non-Siberian traits, resembling those of Australian Aborigines or the Negritos of the Andaman Islands. These hypothetical American Aborigines would have been displaced by the Siberian migrants, and may have been ancestral to the distinctive Native Americans of the Tierra del Fuego, who are nearly extinct. Some mainstream anthropologists and archaeologists consider the genetic and cultural evidence for a primarily Siberian origin overwhelming. According to their theories, at least three separate migrations from Siberia to the Americas are highly likely to have occurred. The first wave came into a land populated by the large mammals of the late Pleistocene, including mammoths, horses, giant sloths, and wooly rhinoceroses. The Clovis culture would be a manifestation of that migration, and the Folsom culture, based on the hunting of bison, would have developed from it. This wave eventually spread over the entire hemisphere, as far south as Tierra del Fuego. The second migration brought the ancestors of the Na-Dene peoples. They lived in Alaska and western Canada, but some migrated as far south as the Pacific Northwestern U.S. and the American Southwest, and would be ancestral to the Dene, Apaches and Navajos. The third wave brought the ancestors of the Eskimos and the Aleuts. They may have come by sea over the Bering Strait, after the land bridge had disappeared. In recent years, molecular genetics studies have suggested as many as four distinct migrations from Asia. These studies also provide surprising evidence of smaller-scale, contemporaneous migrations from Europe, possibly by peoples who had adopted a lifestyle resembling that of Inuits and Yupiks during the last ice age. One result of these successive waves of migration is that large groups of Native Americans with similar languages and perhaps physical characteristics as well, moved into various geographic areas of North, and then Central and South America. While Native Americans have traditionally remained primarily loyal to their individual tribes, ethnologists have variously sought to group the myriad of tribes into larger entities which reflect common geographic origins, linguistic similarities, and life styles. While many Native American groups retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European occupation of the New World, in some regions, specifically in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, in Mexico, Central America, the Andes of South America, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states. Other ideas have been rediscovered, some with growing acceptance, as to the ultimate origin of Native Americans. Most Native American religions teach that humans were created in America at the beginning of time and have continuously occupied the area. In the 19th century and early 20th century, proponents of the existence of lost continents such as Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria used these to explain how humans could have reached the Americas” (Native Americans).
There have been many contradicting beliefs to the Bering Strait theory but they are often discounted as invalid based on the fact that according to Euro-American belief science, even in theory always trumps cultural beliefs and oral historical records. An interesting fact to state is that even a constantly changing science continues to be the prevailing truth. “When I was young, it was '12,000 years ago' when Indians supposedly migrated over the 'ice-bridge' into this continent. Over the years, I have watched this number go up from 12,000 years, to 20,000 years, and now in recent print, I have begun to see the number placed at 30,000 years! It seems that scientists just move the number back whenever something Indian is discovered that pre-dates their Bering Strait migration figure” (Two Hawks).
There is also much evidence that seems to contradict the Bering Strait Theory even further. “Many Indigenous Nations have calendars that have been counting the years for a very long time. I am aware that the calendar of the Mohawk Indian Nation has been counting the winters for over 33,120 years. This pre-dates the so-called 'ice-bridge' of the Bering Strait theory, unless, of course, the Bering Strait scientists decide to move the interestingly illusive time period of our early migration back to 40,000 years! Many American Indian early histories tell of events that took place on this Turtle continent (North America) long before any so-called ice age. But, for political reasons, our histories have been mostly ignored” (Two Hawks). Another contradicting fact is that relating to animal life on the bridge itself and their own migration to the North American continent. “Froelich Rainey has pointed out that “under the current weather conditions, northwestern America and northeastern Asia present the most insurmountable barrier to human communication anywhere in the world and the ice age must have been much worse.”6 In conclusion, the evidence overwhelmingly contradicts the outdated pre-conceived assumption that there must have been a lush paradise to accommodate the herds of megafauna waiting patiently for the ice-corridor to develop in order so that they may rush across into the New World. According to Dr. Arthur Jelinek of the University of Arizona, “there is no evidence at all that any herds of reindeer or any other animals crossed the land bridge. The harsh weather seems to be a deterrent for any migration through Beringia.”7 This lack of any animal remains in the corridor presents a peculiar problem to archaeologists that they have been hard pressed to solve” (Ehecatl).
In conclusion it is hard to say when and who traveled to the North American and by which means. There are so many conflicting and changing viewpoints it is also hard to keep track of them all. Science as it were is constantly changing so it is hard to put faith in their discoveries when they are as changing as the winds. To me it seems that to put my faith in the consistency of the Native American oratory in fact may be more reliable than the supposed cold harshness of science.
Works Cited:
Ehecatl, Itztli. "The Bering Strait Theory." Angelfire: Welcome to Angelfire. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. <http://www.angelfire.com/space/itztli2/>.
Horses, By Domesticating. "Indigenous Peoples of the Americas." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas>.
"Native Americans." Crystalinks Home Page. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. <http://www.crystalinks.com/nativeamericans.html>.
Two Hawks, John. "The Bering Strait Theory." Native American Resources. 13 Oct. 2007. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. <http://nativeamericanresources.blogspot.com/2007/10/bering-strait theory.html>.
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