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This is the final installment of Barry Zellen’s series on Arctic geopolitics.
Thinking about the peopling of the Americas in prehistoric times, and the duelling theories of Ice Age migration, I quite like having multiple theories to ponder, and do not see it as an either-or, one-size-fits-all situation, since each of these trans-Arctic migration theories contains its own metaphorical value for thinking about our own time.
Some find there is much that is counter-intuitive about the original Bering Land Bridge theory, including its non-alignment with so much of the archaeological record. The newer coastal theories have much that is appealing, including an alignment with recent coastal archeology and an embrace of maritime migration and is a logical explanation for seafaring peoples who may not have needed to head north by land, but instead ventured out onto littoral or even open seas.
As noted above, when you consider the success of the Austronesian expansion across nearly all of Oceania, and perhaps as far east as the coast of South America, an earlier maritime explanation cannot be dismissed outright, at least as a partial explanation for the peopling of Americas.
As well, there are some intriguing cultural parallels across the North Pacific, such as between the Ainu in and around the island of Hokkaido and the Kurils, and several of the B.C. coast First Nations, which shared bear worship, subsisted off migrating salmon, and erected magnificent totem poles, to reinforce the plausibility of a direct maritime bridge.
On the other hand, the Thule migration and prior Dorset routes clearly arced toward the far north/northeast and were among the last of the large migrations from the general vicinity of Beringia, suggesting that at least some peoples headed that north through Beringia after earlier routes had been sufficiently peopled, perhaps facing competitive pressures from earlier, and in some cases, larger groups further south, or potentially, fostered by adaptation to the cold,
Ice Age Beringian landscape, found the Arctic coast to be comparably hospitable than the steppes of Central Asia from which they started, and were well adapted by their transit through or “standstill” in Beringia. The original Clovis/megafauna-hunter explanation across a more northerly Mammoth Steppe may similarly explain just one path of migration for big-game hunting peoples, while excluding the many maritime/fishing peoples who either stayed along the coast or traveled across open ocean like the Austronesians.
Each of these theories thus captures one part of the mosaic of prehistoric, trans-Arctic migrations to the Americas.
One can imagine a grand clash between maritime peoples and interior game hunters that may have played out across Eurasia and into the Americas. The former providing a prehistoric proto-Mahanian strategic (and Spykmanian geopolitical, intuitively recognizing the strategic pre-eminence of a maritime Rimland) conception of migratory expansion by sea, and the latter a prehistoric proto-Clausewitzian strategic (and Mackinderian geopolitical, intuitively recognizing the strategic pre-eminence of the interior Heartland) conception of expansion by land – bumping into each other at interfaces such, as river deltas, and across the entirety of Ice Age Beringia.
The relatively recent strategic competition between Athabaskan and Inuit peoples from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, up and over the Yukon watershed to the Brooks Range and into the Mackenzie Delta, and along the Nunavut boundary with the northern prairies; and perhaps the hypothesized prior Thule-Dorset clash (which may well have been an early manifestation of the more modern Inuit-Athabaskan clash), aligns with this somewhat. If we superimpose all these regional rivalries between migrating prehistoric peoples, some with maritime strengths and others better adapted to the interior, we can comparatively understand both the emergence of so many different hypothesized migration corridors as well as their modern variants – each tailored to the strategic and economic cultures of the people involved in their utilization, whether defined by the sea, its coasts, and/or in the interior.
At the very least, it creates some intriguing metaphors to frame contemporary discussions of the various Arctic shipping routes, and who favours which and why.
Indeed, the debates over these prehistoric migration routes through the Arctic remind me of the contemporary debates over future Arctic shipping routes and whether the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Northwest Passage (NWP), or a transpolar route will emerge as future marine transit highways, not just hypothesized proposals or as described in 2011, a fully utilized “golden waterway” and not a “niche trade route.”
More likely, in time, all three routes will find appreciative users whose needs are met by one or another, whether it’s security concerns (that currently aligns Chinese maritime interests with Russia’s NSR, while leaving Japan, until 2022 caused Tokyo to split with Moscow over its Ukraine invasion, a major investor in the NSR, now on the sidelines), or simple questions of the shortest path between departure ports and arrival destinations, or thornier questions of future ice conditions as pack ice breaks apart and drifts south.
It is true the NSR is the first of the Arctic marine transport routes to be properly commercialized, but the NWP is expected to eventually follow in its wake, after an initial lag in development caused in part by Canada’s less exuberant embrace of Arctic shipping (fearing the environmental and security consequences) and its less attractive ice conditions (compounded by an insufficiency of icebreakers to ensure the trade route can stay open).
Many hope that a direct route over the pole will open up, avoiding any conflicts with sovereigns like Russia and Canada, who view these passages as territorial even when most believe otherwise, with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), as the ice retreats and Article 234 (Ice-Covered Areas) becomes less relevant.
Article 34 of UNCLOS states, “Coastal States have the right to adopt and enforce non-discriminatory laws and regulations for the prevention, reduction and control of marine pollution from vessels in ice-covered areas within the limits of the exclusive economic zone, where particularly severe climatic conditions and the presence of ice covering such areas for most of the year create obstructions or exceptional hazards to navigation, and pollution of the marine environment could cause major harm to or irreversible disturbance of the ecological balance. Such laws and regulations shall have due regard to navigation and the protection and preservation of the marine environment based on the best available scientific evidence.”
This would be welcome to Japan, whose isolation of Moscow has come, for now, at the cost of its continued role in the NSR, and to China, whose alignment with Russia, while of near-term benefit, is less appealing than an alternate trade route independent of any single sovereign, friendly or not. In this way, a continued polar thaw would, in time, displace both the NSR and NWP in favour of a trans-polar route.
One can imagine, 20,000 years ago, various groups of Ice Age humanity having, in their own way and through their selected routes, a similar “debate”: across the land bridge of Beringia (or the adjacent waters of the “Fertile Coast” or “Kelp Highway”), over the Mammoth Steppe to its north, or even across the icy North Atlantic. This multiplicity of migration routes and diversity of direction positions the Arctic as a crossroads of globalization since ancient times, linking Asia, Europe and the Americas through or adjacent to Beringia, the Mammoth Steppe or the High North Atlantic’s Icy Crescent, each forming a prehistoric “Middle Ground” where distinct precursor civilizations seeded what would become America’s rich mosaic of Indigenous diversity.
How little the world has changed in 20,000 years, and yet, how much the world has changed. This perhaps is both the paradox and lesson of this ongoing age of Arctic dynamism from the deep geological time of Snowball Earth, when multicellular life proliferated; to the first wave of Arctic globalization during the LGM, in human prehistory; to our own present moment in time, the Anthropocene, with its accelerating polar thaw.
The Arctic united us all, regardless of our origins, regardless of our present Arcticness. Accordingly, it is here for all of us, whether America, Russian or Chinese, or any of the many nations that look to the Arctic for their futures, or in their pasts (or both). Our deep dive across this sweep of time finds the Arctic has and remains at the geostrategic centre of the world time, and in my humble belief, Earth’s first and most enduring geographical pivot.
Central to the evolution of life in deep geological times; to the flow of humanity during the first wave of globalization in the prehistoric Ice Age, to the outward flow of medieval Viking migrations and later the spread of Christianity throughout the Arctic world; and once again, in our contemporary world, serving as a bridge between continents and cultures, the “stepping stones of giants” and increasingly, the rest of us as well.
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