Colonization of the Arctic in the New World

Abstract The first entry of people into northwestern North America in the Late Pleistocene was a highly significant event in the history of the spread of humans across the planet. Many questions remain to be answered concerning the timing of people entering North America, their origins, what caused them to leave Siberia and cross the Bering Land Bridge, and where did they manage to survive the extreme environmental conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum? Part of the problem in addressing these questions is that some key elements of the story very likely took place on the Bering Land Bridge (BLB), the exposed continental shelf regions that linked northeastern Siberia with Alaska during the last glaciation. Since the land bridge flooded near the end of the last glaciation, any evidence of human occupation there is now deeply submerged in the Bering and Chukchi Seas. We discuss these topics in turn and devote the remainder of this review to examining the peopling of Arctic North America during the middle to late Holocene.