The theory that the Americas were populated by peoples from Asia over the Bering Land Bridge may have some support. Not that these were the only people that made the journey, but a news report details:
“Geologists and geophysicists have discovered traces of large ice sheets from the Pleistocene on a seamount off the north-eastern coast of Russia, confirming for the first time that within the past 800,000 years in the course of ice ages, ice sheets more than a kilometer thick also formed in the Arctic Ocean.”
The evidence indicates that these enormous ice sheets didn’t only form on the continents, but also in the oceans, except during the height of the last ice age (21,000 BP.)
The results are from a seamount north of Wrangel Island in Russian waters, northwest of the Bering Straits.
While obviously more research is necessary to talk about the extent of the Arctic Ocean ice sheets, the possibility exists that earlier Ice Ages provided a path to the Americas, not just during the last Ice Age. Another possibility is that the sheets of ice might have also provided access from either side of the continent. After all, doesn’t the Arctic Ocean touch the Atlantic and Pacific?
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