Origins & Settlement Patterns INFORMATION

Land Bridge Theory

The Land Bridge Theory, also known as the Bering Strait Theory or Beringia Theory, is a popular model of migration into the New World.  This theory was first proposed in 1590 by José de Acosta and has been widely accepted since the 1930s.  The Land Bridge Theory proposes that people migrated from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge that spanned the current day Bering Strait.  The first people to populate the Americas were believed to have migrated across the Bering Land Bridge while tracking large game animal herds.

The Clovis First Hypothesis:

Over the last half-century, archaeologists have largely agreed that the first Americans migrated into North America from Asia more than fourteen to twenty thousand years ago by an overland route across the frozen Land Bridge.

Althrough it is likely that there were additional migration routes into America, the importance of ancient Berinigia and its role in peopling America is undeniable.

The initial confimation for the long-held Land Bridge theory came from the discovery of spear points near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 20th century, between 1929 and 1937, that matched the kinds of artifacts found in Beringia.

Carbon dating has now placed these spear points are more than 13,500 years old.  The majority of archaeologists have traditionally seen this as direct proof of both the Bering Land Bridge theory and timeline of early migration into America.

Subsequent discoveries of Clovis style artifacts in other areas of the Southwestern United States seemed to offer further confirmation for the theory and timeline, which held undisputed sway for many decades.  Even today, the Beringia theory, is still the dominant American migration hypothesis.

This image depicts possible migration routes.