> One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion Exactly so. While there's re

> One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion Exactly so. While there's reluctance to admit it (even now) there are stories that some Alaska Natives maintained contact with their friends and relatives in Siberia, even during the Cold War. I can certainly believe it. There's a lot of lonely coastline in that area, and not much monitoring -- certainly not back then. But yeah, the main thrust of what I was saying was that the indigenous people had boats capable of making the crossing long before Europeans arrived on the scene, so the "land bridge" idea is not the pat explanation that many seem to think it is. The "land bridge" may have existed, and was probably used when it did exist, but it's clearly not the whole story. We know that Alaska Natives were making this trip, and even longer ones, regularly before the arrival of Europeans. Heck, the Tlingit in Southeast Alaska were running water-based slave raids as far afield as California before the Europeans arrived.