Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Time to Bury the Beringia Land Bridge

One of the most ridiculous and irrational beliefs archaeologists and anthropologists has tried to foster on man is the idea of a land bridge across the Bering Straits 15,000 to 12,500 years ago over which the Western Hemisphere was populated. There are so many flaws in this hypothesis that it does not warrant more than a chuckle and then quick dismissal; however, it is one of the more pervasive ideas that continues to linger on despite its invalid and unsound precepts, and is used for the basis of DNA movement and population distribution in almost every article on the subject.
According to these evolutionary scientists, this bridge existed during the last Glacial Period, when Siberia, Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland were covered with thick glacial ice.
Lest we forget our school teachings of glaciers, they are huge, solid sheets of ice, sometimes as thick as the highest mountains. During the ice age, glaciers covered North America, including all of Canada with a large Cordilleran Ice Sheet, and extending as far south as Pennsylvania and Missouri
The almost ridiculous idea is, that at this time (15,000 to 12,500 B.C.), with ice sheets and glacial ice everywhere in the northern lands, that the oceans were lowered and an area of land 58-miles wide and now 165-feet below the freezing ocean water of the Bering Strait (394-feet along a vertical canyon), was dry grassland over which large numbers of people could cross from Siberia to what is now Alaska. These ocean waters receded so far that the land was dry over 580,000 square miles, from as much as 165 feet to 262 feet through the straits, and as much as 394 feet along the outer edges of the pink area in the map below.
The lighter color area is the ocean floor claimed to have been exposed by receding ocean levels. Also note the glacial ice (white area) covering any movement toward the south or east across Canada
In order for this land to have become dry and an actual land bridge to have existed, the world’s oceans would have been 300-feet lower than they are today; however, though the oceans were considered to be over 300 feet lower 20,000 years ago, during the time frame that the Beringia Land Bridge was supposed to have existed, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate, Earth Sciences Division, in an article “Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today,” by Vivien Gornitz, in January 2007, the depth difference was approximately 130 feet lower than today—a depth that would not have reached the land beneath the sea through the Bering Strait (165-feet to 394-feet ) or any of the other areas claimed to be the area called Beringia.
In addition, these scientists claim that sea beds buried for millions of years, beneath millions of tons of freezing ocean sea water, sprouted grasses and shrubs during a time of huge ice glaciers covering nearly all the surrounding areas on both sides of the land bridge. In addition, it is claimed that animals, such as the saber-tooth cat, woolly mammoth, and various ungulates (horses, cattle, deer, swine, and elephants), left warmer climes and traveled into thee frozen lands, crossed the glaciers, in search of food, then found the grasslands of Beringia in the midst of all these frozen ice sheets.
Now, if that isn’t strange enough, these same scientists claim that people also left the warmer climate areas, covered with grass, trees and game, to follow these animals into the frozen northern lands, across the glaciers to the supposed grassland along Beringia and the land bridge, where they settled down.
Then at some point, the seas began to rise and waters encroached upon the land bridge forcing the people to leave; however, instead of going back the way they had come, a way they knew had been safe and above the sea levels, scientists would have us believe that these people, threatened with rising flood waters, chose to head further eastward into the unknown where nothing but glacial ice awaited them.
Now if that isn’t enough for you, these people not only progressed into the unknown lands covered with glacial ice for 2,000 miles to the south before leaving the glaciers and entering the dry land of the northern U.S., but they never stopped there. They continued to travel southward, across the lush area of the northwest and leaving that behind to cross into the desert lands of the southwest, clear through barren Mexico, the rain forests of Central America, the swamps of Panama and into South America, all the way to the southern frozen lands of Patagonia.
At this point we need to back up to those people crossing the land bridge—not all went south. According to these scientists, some of these people went east, crossing 3,000 miles of frozen, glacial ice, to the east coast of northern Canada where they crossed 225 miles of sea and then into the ice-covered interior of Greenland where they settled.
Now, I ask you—would anyone really believe people would do that? I mean, who would leave warm climates where game for food was available to travel further and further into colder and colder climates and keep going across glacial ice and snow? We are not talking about a few hearty hunters, but entire clans, tribes, or groups of people, with men, women and children, including some types of flocks or herds for meat and milk, etc.
According to these scientists, the entire Western Hemisphere was settled from the north and their expansion went southward. This means that Alaska, western Canada, and northwestern United States, were all settled long before Central America and South America. It also stands to reason that the settlements in the north should be older than those in the south; however, archaeology tells us emphatically that the opposite is true!
The oldest settlements in the entire Western Hemisphere are found in the Peruvian Andes and along the coasts of Peru of South America. In fact, the only two places in the entire Western Hemisphere where buildings can be dated show that those in the Andean area of South America are far older than those of Mesoamerica, which are far older than anywhere else in the Americas.
Now why do we find the oldest settlements in western South America, about 8000 miles south of the Beringia Land Bridge? And the only buildings or settlements that can accurately be dated (meaning hard evidence, i.e., buildings, structures, etc.) to the north of the Peru settlements are those of Mesoamerica, still about 5500 miles south of  the land bridge.

Left: Tiwanaku in Peru, South America; Right: Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, in Mesoamerica--both very advanced cultures unlike anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere
It is also quite interesting that the only two really advanced ancient cultures in the history of the Western Hemisphere are found in the south with nothing like them or anything close to their development and age between the their areas and the land bridge.
Simply put, the idea of a north to south migration history is not supportable by any evidence in the ground under any circumstances, yet true to their natural colors, the scientists continue to cling to their land bridge crossing and southward migratory patterns.
Is there anything more obviously incompatible with reason and facts?
Yet, this irrational idea of the land bridge crossing is so deeply embedded in the scientists’ conscience that it lies at the basis of all modern thought on the settlement of the Western Hemisphere--and no doubt has colored the DNA research of the subject. Isn’t it time we buried such antiquated thinking and look for other methods of settlement that agree with the factual data of settlement from south to north?

1 comment:

  1. You got to remember though, hunter gathers follow animals they eat. And these migrations didn't just happen in a life time, it probably took hundreds and possibly thousands of years, easily enough time for people to "forget their way back from which they came". These people didn't have maps, they didn't know where they were going, as one would now. In fact, there is no reason to think that they even were aware that they crossed a land bridge into a new land; from their perspective they were just moving with the flow over thousands of generations.

    Also, there is quite a lot of evidence pointing towards massive northern american civilizations that are comparable in size and scope to the south american and mesoamerican societies. For reasons beyond me, I was never taught about it in school.

    To me, this article downgrades the old idea of american colonization way too easily, however it brings up some interesting points. Personally I believe that the ice-free corridor was likely used, but it doesn't mean that there might have been other means that early humans made it to the americas.

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