Alaska site reveals life on Bering Land Bridge 14,000 years ago
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Kelly Graf of the University of Kansas leads a research team studying the Shég' Xdaltth'i' archaeological site in Alaska, uncovering evidence of people who lived there around 13,800 years ago.
The site overlooks the Tanana River and contains remains from three distinct periods, 13,800, 13,000, and 12,700 years ago, demonstrating how people settled in the region during the late Ice Age.
Researchers found over 80,000 artifacts, including tools and animal bones, showing that these people hunted now-extinct megafauna like mammoth, bison, and horse, alongside caribou, which remains an important food source for Alaska Native communities today. The team discovered a large stone anvil surrounded by broken bison bones and hammerstones, indicating the site’s inhabitants processed bones for marrow and fat near an earth oven.
They also found uniquely shaped stone points similar to those found on the Russian side of the Bering Land Bridge, a region that once connected Asia and North America, suggesting travel between the continents. Graf began excavating the site in 2013 and continues to return, believing that understanding the past helps people understand human adaptation and evolution.
She and her colleagues hope to further illuminate how a small population of hunter-gatherers expanded to over eight billion people in a relatively short period of time.
