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Also, Beringia went through many cycles of land and sea coverage[0]. Our climate has been pretty up and down since homo sapiens came onto the stage. Aside: The

by Balgair 10y ago

Also, Beringia went through many cycles of land and sea coverage[0]. Our climate has been pretty up and down since homo sapiens came onto the stage. Aside: The land-bridge was not just a passing point, it was actually a nice place to sit and stay, due to the wind, sea, and glacial climatic issues. Also, the coastal-migration idea states that we just skimmed the coast all the way to at least Chile. The issue with that idea is that all those coast lines and settlement areas are about 200m under water now and were likely destroyed by wave action, so it's hard to prove. Beringia is a really cool place to study, pardon the pun, and helps change some ideas about how humans came to be. It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

dpc59 10y ago
You'd think the land bridge would have pretty fertile soil too, with it having been seabed a few years prior and whatnot.
- flukus 10y ago
  Does it glaciate? That process often grinds away everything down to the bedrock.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    I don't believe the Bering Strait area was subject to any recent (within the timeframe we're discussing) glaciation. And there is always a leading edge of the glacier where all that ground-up goodness ends up. Many dynamic biomes are found on the boundaries of extreme and hostile environments.
    - Balgair 10y ago
      Take a look at the wiki page linked above. Beringia was never really covered in ice due to the wind and sea currents near it when it existed. The area was a 'refugium' of steppe grasses and light forests. It is thought that people may have moved there, stayed there, and then moved back into Asia as time went on, as well as into the Americas. As for using the area to farm, the very short summer growing season of higher latitudes is not well suited for agriculture.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Cultivating salt marshes isn't ideal.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jlarocco 10y ago
> It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. I've wondered about that a lot, actually. If homo sapiens have been around for ~200k years (according to wikipedia), what were we doing for the first 185k years? What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen? On a larger time frame, how many species have lived and died and had every trace of their existence crushed and melted down by plate tectonics? It's fascinating to think about, and a little sad that we'll never know the answer.
- pmalynin 10y ago
  "What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen?" Old question, the answer is: Agricultural Revolution
  - nkoren 10y ago
    That's the traditional answer, but it's wrong. Göbekli Tepe[1] decisively pre-dates agriculture. Although it wasn't inhabited, it displays a level of technology and social organisation on par with city-building. But agriculture definitely had nothing to do with it. Not saying that I've got a good answer for what did happen -- just that agriculture wasn't it. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Your citation does not support the "decisively predates agriculture" claim, and in fact refers to early agriculture at the site as one of the competing interpretations.
      - nkoren 10y ago
        Göbekli Tepe was built ~11,500 years ago, and it probably isn't a coincidence that early agriculture was developed in the same area -- about 1,000 years later. The early agriculture reference that you mention concerns the fact that the was abandoned as early agriculture started to take hold: > Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BCE Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "Stone-age zoo" (Schmidt's phrase applied particularly to Layer III, Enclosure D) apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging communities. I haven't seen any sources citing evidence for Göbekli Tepe post-dating agriculture, but there are many lines of evidence that it pre-dates it -- such as an absence of cultivated grains, granary structures, or other evidence that one sees as agriculture actually gets going. All the plant remains that have been found are wild varieties. Thus the mainstream assumption is that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers.
azernik 10y ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- Balgair 10y ago
  Yeah! There are a lot of areas on Earth that Homo used to inhabit, but have disappeared under the oceans. Here are some more, for those that are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

by Balgair 10y ago

dpc59 10y ago

You'd think the land bridge would have pretty fertile soil too, with it having been seabed a few years prior and whatnot.

flukus 10y ago
Does it glaciate? That process often grinds away everything down to the bedrock.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  I don't believe the Bering Strait area was subject to any recent (within the timeframe we're discussing) glaciation. And there is always a leading edge of the glacier where all that ground-up goodness ends up. Many dynamic biomes are found on the boundaries of extreme and hostile environments.
  - Balgair 10y ago
    Take a look at the wiki page linked above. Beringia was never really covered in ice due to the wind and sea currents near it when it existed. The area was a 'refugium' of steppe grasses and light forests. It is thought that people may have moved there, stayed there, and then moved back into Asia as time went on, as well as into the Americas. As for using the area to farm, the very short summer growing season of higher latitudes is not well suited for agriculture.
lostlogin 10y ago
Cultivating salt marshes isn't ideal.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jlarocco 10y ago

> It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. I've wondered about that a lot, actually. If homo sapiens have been around for ~200k years (according to wikipedia), what were we doing for the first 185k years? What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen? On a larger time frame, how many species have lived and died and had every trace of their existence crushed and melted down by plate tectonics? It's fascinating to think about, and a little sad that we'll never know the answer.

pmalynin 10y ago
"What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen?" Old question, the answer is: Agricultural Revolution
- nkoren 10y ago
  That's the traditional answer, but it's wrong. Göbekli Tepe[1] decisively pre-dates agriculture. Although it wasn't inhabited, it displays a level of technology and social organisation on par with city-building. But agriculture definitely had nothing to do with it. Not saying that I've got a good answer for what did happen -- just that agriculture wasn't it. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Your citation does not support the "decisively predates agriculture" claim, and in fact refers to early agriculture at the site as one of the competing interpretations.
    - nkoren 10y ago
      Göbekli Tepe was built ~11,500 years ago, and it probably isn't a coincidence that early agriculture was developed in the same area -- about 1,000 years later. The early agriculture reference that you mention concerns the fact that the was abandoned as early agriculture started to take hold: > Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BCE Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "Stone-age zoo" (Schmidt's phrase applied particularly to Layer III, Enclosure D) apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging communities. I haven't seen any sources citing evidence for Göbekli Tepe post-dating agriculture, but there are many lines of evidence that it pre-dates it -- such as an absence of cultivated grains, granary structures, or other evidence that one sees as agriculture actually gets going. All the plant remains that have been found are wild varieties. Thus the mainstream assumption is that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers.

azernik 10y ago

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Balgair 10y ago
Yeah! There are a lot of areas on Earth that Homo used to inhabit, but have disappeared under the oceans. Here are some more, for those that are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland