Talk:Beringia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good article Beringia was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
April 15, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed
Earth sciences Portal
Beringia is part of WikiProject Geology, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use geology resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Comments

This is by no means an encyclopedic article. - Montréalais

I would like to know how far below sea level the area in question currently is. Dietary Fiber

According to [http://www.cabrillo.:That shoud read 7,000, not 70,000, Danny. Tannin 01:11 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Danny

I for one have absolutely no problem with 64.'s points being added (in NPOV language) but unfortunately at the moment it's hard to get a word in edgewise on this article. Hephaestos 00:02 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

Acording to a book I've just looked at, the last time the land bridge was exposed was between 24,000 and 9,000 bc User:G-Man


In the Summary Box comments, an anonymous user is slandering a Wikipedia contributor as promoting "scientific racism" for the "sin" of writing about the Bering Land Bridge, a very mainstream scientific theory which has a lot of science to back it up. This same anonymous user then claims that this land bridge is only as real as Atlantis! Finally he makes insulting comments about "Don't believe what they tell you about Indians". His over-the-top comments make clear that he has no interest in dispassionately discussing the article. He just has an axe to grind, and is willing to demonize all those who write about the scientific consensus on this issue. And the consensus is this: Much data exists for the existence of a land bridge at various times; much data indicates that people lived near this bridge at times that it probably existed. And there is indisputable evidence that Asians did cross over from the northern Asia area to northern North America, somewhere in the vicinity of the putative Bering Land bridge. Does this prove that this land bridge existed at all the times it is said to, and that people crossed it? No, and the scientific community makes no such absolute claim. The current consensus is that it probably existed, that's all. It is not held as a dogma! At the moment, some new evidence has surfaced which questions whether people crossed this land bridge. Fine. But that is no reason to hurl charges of "racism" at those who write about a mainstream belief! RK

If people didn't walk from Asia to North America, what did they do? Did they build canoes and sail from North Africa to Brazil? Dietary Fiber

There is quite a lot of genetic evidence indicating that modern american "indians" ancestors were asian in origin. This seems to be solid evidence that either they walked across the land bridge, or crossed the Bering Sea in boats of some kind. Maybe even BOTH at various times!!! -- RTC 03:31 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe they floated across on icebergs! Dietary Fiber

Maybe some did... we will never know that one :-) -- RTC 03:36 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

I have restored a clearer version of the Clovis sentence. There is indeed a theory that the Clovis people were not the first to reach America, a good deal of deeply questionable evidence for it, and a smaller amount of evidence that appears much more difficult to discredit. The jury is still out on that one. Be that as it may, there is no question that the Clovis were the first significant human arrivals in America: the Clovis left evidence of their passing everywhere and had a profound effect on the ecology of the North American continent. This is why I wrote "notably the Clovis arrival" - this is probably not the right article in which to explore the pre-Clovis controversy

It is certainly not dogma. -RK

Which is why American archaeologists rejected accelerator mass spectrometry outright when a site in Brazil showed up with cave paintings 60,000 years old - far too old for the Bering Strait Puts them right up there with Duane Gish and other creationists, eh? I'm sure you've heard of Pedra Furada? Also, they've never found Clovis points in Asia or Alaska, but they insist that Clovis came from Asia; it's like some wacky diffusionist claim. Mibbyagain

On a side note, here's evidence humans were in South Carolina 50,000 years ago:

http://www.sc.edu/usctimes/articles/2004-11/topper_discovery.html

Doesn't help much to have humans in South Carolina before Siberia.

It does help though when the evidence is so tenuous that nobody whose opinion matters is taking it seriously [1]. adamsan 08:47, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, well, "everyone whose opinion matters" seems to be a mixture of out-of-their-field types and people resorting to ad hominems. That was certainly the case with Pedra Furada and Monte Verde; they "discredited" it via ad hominems.

[edit] Doesn't it still exist today?

To quote from a source on the web: "It is known, however, that the Eskimos crossed the Bering Strait in both directions until the Cold War and that they maintained active business, familial and cultural connections across the Bering Strait. Mention can me made of the extremely close proximity between the Little Diomede Island under US control and the Big Diomede under Russian control. These islands are only a few miles apart and when the Bering Strait freezes in the winter, there is a surface connection between the two islands. For centuries also, Siberians and Alaskans married, traded and made war with one another across the Strait."

So I've been given to understand from various sources that today you can walk from the US to Siberia, albeit only in winter! --Michael

Cite your source and edit it in. The first humans to cross the bridge may well have done it from bay to bay, similarly island-hopping along the former shoreline, rather than hiking through the interior.--Wetman 9 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
Apparently this guy walked across the Bering strait and was detained by the Russians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Bushby —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.195.36.133 (talk) 22:46, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Animation

I came across this very cool animation which shows the shape of Beringia and how it's changed over the last 20,000 years. Since it's on a U.S. government site, it might be fair game to use it on the page itself (works produced by U.S. employees as part of their jobs are public domain). It'd certainly be better than the current image, which doesn't really give a clear picture of how big it was, etc. 131.107.0.80 21:00, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Somehow this animation was listed as a link twice under different names: "Paleoenvironmetal atlas of Beringia", and "An animation of flooding of the Bering Land bridge over 2000 years"; I edited the page so that it held this link only once. I agree, though -- helpful depiciton of the land bridge's development and recession. -Julia

[edit] Better research and citations

The article is working, it seems, from some rather dated material on Beringia. In:

  • Bonatto SL, Salzano FM. 1997. A single and early migration for the peopling of the Americas supported by mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 94(5): 1866-1871.

They indicate that migration could have been occuring as early as 55,000 ybp.

In addition, differing information has come from the comparison of mtDNA haplotypes and Y-chromosomal haplotypes. Compare:

  • Silva Jr. W , Bonatto S , Holanda A , Ribeiro-dos-Santos A , Paixão B , Goldman G , Abe-Sandes K, Rodriguez-Delfin L, Barbosa M, Paçó-Larson M, Petzl-Erler M, Valente V, Santos S , Zago M . 2002. Mitochondrial Genome Diversity of Native Americans Supports a Single Early Entry of Founder Populations into America. Am J Hum Genet. 71(1): 187-192.[2]

and

  • Lell J , Sukernik R , Starikovskaya Y , Su B, Jin L, Schurr T , Underhill P , Wallace D. 2002. The Dual Origin and Siberian Affinities of Native American Y Chromosomes. Am J Hum Genet'. 70(1): 192-206.[3]

L Hamm 00:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

While many claims to pre-Clovis American settlement abound, from both archaeological and genetic disciplines, none as yet have 'majority' support. The timeframe of c. 12000 yrs remains the earliest evidential date for which there is universal agreement. The evidence produced so far for earlier dates continues to be treated with caution, if not outright scepticism, by many researchers who are awaiting more concrete data before assenting. No reason not to mention a few of the more notable "early arrival" claims however, but they need to be flagged as speculative and unconfirmed.
I agree however that the article as it stands needs a good deal more of reliable cites, in any event.--cjllw | TALK 06:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removal of supposition

The following was recently inserted (at the wrong location), which I have removed:

  • It is likely that small groups of humans would have been able to cross the Bering Strait under conditions that favored a fully frozen route, without the necessity of a completely lowered ocean surface height. Native populations would typically find conditions that they would comprehend, and for whatever reason, would have crossed the divide under many opportunities as conditions warranted. So the extension of populations into the nether regions of North America would have been predominantly driven by social needs, as it would have been likely that some populations of humans would have occupied both sides of the Bering Straits in many prehistoric times.

While much of this is quite reasonable, these are suppositions, and as such need to have a notable source making them, otherwise it reads like original research or opinion. To be included, some cite ought to be found and the wording re-cast in a more encyclopaedic manner.--cjllw | TALK 06:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalize?

Why isn't this at Bering Land Bridge? →bjornthegreat t|c 01:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rename Beringia?

I feel pretty strongly that this should be renamed Beringia, with 'Bering Land Bridge' etc redirecting to it. That's what it is properly called in the academic literature. How do I go about proposing this officially, or? Thanks.--Doug Weller (talk) 16:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Your rationale sounds fair so I've moved the page for you. The typical rule is to be bold in such circumstances and move the page yourself, and wait for anyone to complain! Verisimilus T 15:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Since my earlier post above I've learned quite a bit :-) Doug Weller (talk) 16:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article? If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do? Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia? At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. The survey will end on April 30. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 01:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Fail

Unfortunately, this article does not meet the GA criteria at this time. Almost all of the article is unreferenced. This includes quotations and speculation (Had this bridge not existed at that time, the fauna of the world would be very different.). While true, it requires a source. References should also be consistently formatted, preferably with a {{cite web}} template for internet sources. I recommend sourcing the article with in-text citations and placing it for peer review before renominating. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 05:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)