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6 - Braving the New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Renée Hetherington
Affiliation:
University of Victoria, British Columbia
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Summary

…some started over the glacier.

These are the ones who came down the Chilkat, the relatives of my fathers,

The Dakl’ aweidí.

Excerpt from the Tlingit story Kák’w Shaadaax’ x’éidáx sh kalneek

Perhaps the greatest mystery remaining in the migration history of modern humans is how and when early people appeared in the Americas. Archaeologists believe they arrived some time during the last ice age (between 30,000 and 11,650 years ago), when massive ice sheets covered much of the northern hemisphere. Many think they arrived around or soon after 21,500 years ago, at the time when glaciers reached their greatest extent.

What was the environment of the Americas like during the last ice age?

The environment at that time was extreme! Not only did huge ice sheets, some 2.5 kilometers thick, cover the northern half of North America, but coastal areas next to the ice sheets were drowned, whereas offshore, in areas where ice was thin or absent, the continental shelf bulged upward, exposing large coastal plains.

Although Alaska , in the far northwest corner of North America , is now seen as a cold, snowy place, it was mostly free of ice during the last ice age . Only southern Alaska was ice-covered, and little snow fell elsewhere. As a result, grizzly bears and other species of mammals survived there during the last ice age . Conditions were similar in much of the Arctic , where very little ice covered dry, sage grasslands and shrub tundra.

Type
Chapter
Information
Living in a Dangerous Climate
Climate Change and Human Evolution
, pp. 58 - 70
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • Braving the New World
  • Renée Hetherington, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Living in a Dangerous Climate
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139083607.011
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  • Braving the New World
  • Renée Hetherington, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Living in a Dangerous Climate
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139083607.011
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Braving the New World
  • Renée Hetherington, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Living in a Dangerous Climate
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139083607.011
Available formats
×