Travel with Indigo

We are now passing between the Big and Little Diomede Islands, which are encased in dense clouds visible only in their lower elevations. Still, even with the limited visibility they are impressive pinnacles rising from the sea and from them the coasts of Russia and Alaska are easily visible. Using the chart plotter, we calculate that roughly speaking these islands are separated from both the Russian and Alaskan coasts by just less than 23 statute miles in both directions and are themselves just over two miles apart. What is most striking, however, is that Big Diomede is a sheer steeple of rock rising to nearly a mile high. This means that it is a stunningly obvious navigational beacon for anybody wishing to cross the strait.

For me it strongly reinforces the prevailing theory among paleoanthropologists that the indigenous populations of the Americas migrated over the Bering Strait in three main waves beginning about 42,000 years ago. This is thought to have occurred during one of the many ice ages, when global sea levels were at uncommonly low levels permitting the early humans simply to walk across the strait. Yet, even if sea levels weren’t sufficiently low to allow walking the entire way across, the Big Diomede would serve as the clearest possible navigational marker for anybody wishing to paddle an early watercraft part way, or even the entire way, across. Crossing would have been a far less demanding task than I had ever imagined it would be.

Another possible avenue, quite likely during an ice age, is that the entire strait iced over during the winter permitting a leisurely stroll across. When we were in Tuktoyaktuk, the locals said that the harbor there froze over by mid September and that by November ice roads opened across what are now salt water bays of considerable depth. Cars and trucks drive across these throughout the winter, and that’s in a period far warmer than any ice age. Depths in the strait, according to our charts, average today about 70 to 150 feet, roughly the same as those bays around Tuk that freeze over to an ice depth sufficient to allow heavy trucks to pass over. It takes no imagination to see that during past ice ages, when sea levels were considerably lower than they are today, the Bering Strait in winter would have been a solid highway of ice, a highway that beckoned North America’s first humans and the wild game they sought for sustenance. I’m convinced the prevailing theory is right.