![[Pasted image 20250201162350.png]] *Click on the link to see the coastlines decrease over time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia#/media/File:Beringia_land_bridge-noaagov.gif* During the last [[Glacial Maximum|Ice Age]], between about 36,000 and about 12,000 years ago, a land historians now call Beringia existed between Asia and North America. Sea levels were about 360 feet lower than they are at present, so a landmass as wide as Alaska was exposed that connected what is now eastern Siberia with what is now western North America, for probably well over ten thousand years (or twice as long as all of recorded history). The first inhabitants of the two continents that would be much later named the Americas lived in Beringia for thousands of years during the ice age, and then migrated into the Americas following the animals they hunted when glaciers began to retreat and rising sea levels cut them off from Asia. This was a gradual change, beginning over fifteen thousand years ago and probably happening in several waves, the last of which was about eleven thousand years ago.  Although some scholars have suggested that migrations from Africa or from the Pacific may also have taken place, the fact that Asians and American Indians share genetic markers on a Y chromosome supports the theory that the ancestors of Native Americans entered the Americas through Beringia. --- Next: [[1.2 Monte Verde]]