Karen Veiller, age 11, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, for her question:
How did the Indians get across the Bering Strait?
The search goes on, but most likely we never shall know when the first human families arrived in the Americas. But we know more or less inhere they came from and we do know the route they took to get there. They came across what is now called the Bering Strait that separates Alaska and Asia. No, they did not cross those 50 miles of water in their famous birch bark canoes. Believe it or not, they walked.
They were at home along the northeast shores when the Vikings arrived a thousand years ago. They were at home in the.l7est Indies to greet Columbus in 1492. The great mariner thought he had sailed westward around the globe as far as the East Indies. So he called the so called natives, Indians. Later explorers corrected his geographical mistake, adding the American continents and the Pacific Ocean to the global map. But nobody corrected the name of America's original settlers.
Nowadays, most of us strive to be courteous in these matters. For this reason, lie refer to the original New Worlders as Amerindians, or American Indians. Sometimes they refer to themselves as American aborigines, which means The Original Settlers of America.
They walked here in small groups across a land bridge that no longer exists. It appeared and disappeared several times where fingers of Alaska and Asia reach out across the North Pacific. The route was discovered again and again by small groups of wanderers, whenever the Bering land bridge happened to be available.
Earth scientists trace the major motions of the drifting continents plus minor geographical changes caused by mountain making and ice ages. They tell us that some 200 million years ago all the land masses were united. A million years ago, there still was land across the North Atlantic and early animals migrated between the Old and New Worlds. But this coos much too soon for wandering human families.
During the past million years, four great ice ages came and went. Enormous amounts of the world's water were frozen solid in massive glaciers. This caused a lowering of the global sea level. Along many shores, seas receded, adding more land along the continental coasts.
In the North Pacific, the ice ages created the land bridge where Alaska and Asia now reach out across the sea. Maybe the ocean bed was exposed by the lower sea level and crusted with ice. This is inhere numerous groups of wanderers crossed on foot from Asia to America. When at last the glaciers melted, the seas rose and flooded the Bering Strait.
Archeologists study buried remains to trace the goings on of early mankind. But these tell tale treasures are rare and most early people departed without leaving a single sign. Bits of evidence spread far and wide can be dated to prove that Amerindians had settled here or there. So far, we know that some groups were here more than 20,000 years ago. Possibly some arrived 30,000 or more years ago. The search goes on, but nobody is likely to find proof of the first human family that crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to the Americas.