Science: Camping 10,000 Years Ago

During the last glacier age 10,000 to 25,000 years ago, sluggish rivers of Arctic ice created a temporary land crossing between Siberia and Alaska at the Bering Strait. Anthropologists have long agreed that this intercontinental bridge—which vanished when the glaciers melted—was crossed by the earliest known North American settlers, who moved far down the continent in search of game (stone spearheads 100 centuries old were unearthed in Folsom, N. Mex., in 1926). Last week, to the existing evidence of the ice-age migration from Asia, a Columbia University anthropologist added an important new find: the oldest Alaskan campsite yet found on the Paleo-Indians’ way south.

Heading a five-man team financed by the Arctic Institute of North America, Columbia’s Ralph S. Solecki focused his search on a desolate coastal plain 300 miles east of Point Barrow. There, he reasoned, a narrow coastal strip protected by mountains suggested a natural corridor for early nomads. “Like modern campers,” said Solecki, “they liked to set themselves up in well-drained spots sheltered from the wind.”

For three weeks, prowling the spongy tundra between the Sadlerochit and Shubelik mountains, the prospectors found nothing but Eskimo and pre-Eskimo artifacts, 2,000 to 5,000 years old. Then, just two days before a plane was due to take them home, Solecki and Colleague Bert Salwen decided to prospect a knoll that looked like just the kind of place a caribou hunter might stand, with a sweeping view of the mountain valley. They were right. Half-hidden in a litter of rocks, they found 25 “choppers”—crudely edged stones with which the first visitors from Asia skinned their catch 10,000 years ago.