The question of the "peopling of the Americas" has arisen - again. A claim of a 30-odd kyr collection of worked points suggesting a very pre-Clovis occupation. Interesting, but the "tools" aren't wonderfully convincing.
A while ago, I looked at the seabed of Beringia - I think some idiot (Musk? or one of his hangers-on?) had suggested tunnelling a "hyperloop" from Anchorage to Vladivostok or some such stupidity. Well, here's the seabed topology :
(Figure made with GeoMapApp (www.geomapapp.org) / CC BY, using GMRT data from Ryan, W. B. F., S.M. Carbotte, J. Coplan, S. O'Hara, A. Melkonian, R. Arko, R.A. Weissel, V. Ferrini, A. Goodwillie, F. Nitsche, J. Bonczkowski, and R. Zemsky (2009), Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) synthesis data set, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 10, Q03014, doi:10.1029/2008GC002332.)
A while ago, I looked at the seabed of Beringia - I think some idiot (Musk? or one of his hangers-on?) had suggested tunnelling a "hyperloop" from Anchorage to Vladivostok or some such stupidity. Well, here's the seabed topology :
From the tunnelling point of view, the shortest route involves a sump at 40 or so metres below sea level, plus some actual rock thickness below sea bed - unless you want your tunnel/tube exposed to wave activity, which is a whole 'nother world of engineering fun. The Musk-o-philes don't seem to think of things like that - they're seriously disconnected from reality. Oh, the tunnel is evacuated, which is goign to make every extra 10m of water quite a significant load for collapse loads.
To the state of Beringia at the alleged time of the settlement of the Americas, the southern margin seems to have been a complex of small islands - good for island-hopping by small craft ("kayaks" or equivalent) and that would have been the case for a long time before and after the sea level low stand, but the islands changing in detail.
To the state of Beringia at the alleged time of the settlement of the Americas, the southern margin seems to have been a complex of small islands - good for island-hopping by small craft ("kayaks" or equivalent) and that would have been the case for a long time before and after the sea level low stand, but the islands changing in detail.
Humans probably had raft, if not small craft technology from around 60kyr BP, when humans made it to Australasia. Combining that with sewing - for making tailored clothing - and most subsequent humans would have had most of the technologies to island hop along the south coast of Beringia and/ or the Aleutian islands without making any irreversible "leap of faith" journeys. Since humans had been doing this along the preceding 10,000km of the Asian-Pacific coast, it's almost surprising that it took so long for humans to reach the Americas.
