This is a short but compelling history of a major event in recent geological studies: the final proof in the early 1970s of the onetime existence of the Bering Land Bridge, a long-surmised strip of land that connected North America and Asia in the Ice Age, possibly as early as 14,000 years ago. Starting with the work of a Jesuit missionary in 1589, but focusing on natural historian Dave Hopkins, Alaskan historian O'Neill (The Firecracker Boys
) gives an impressive presentation of the 400-year-old debate over Beringia, the name now commonly given to the land bridge over which early humans would have crossed eastward. But O'Neill is equally interested—perhaps more so—in paying tribute to Hopkins, the scientist whose pioneering archeological and geological studies defined Beringia as a distinctive area and ecosystem and who shaped the direction of modern Arctic studies. Starting with the influence of Hopkins's nature-loving New England mother, O'Neill charts what became a life of "searching for clues of ancient landscapes." He gives clear and compelling summaries of Hopkins's most important work, from his early discovery that deep spots in the Bering Strait were actually canyons and fragments of ancient river valleys, to his final landmark studies indicating that the ecological conditions of the land bridge would have been able to support herds of grazing animals, conditions that also would have permitted the land bridge to be inhabited by humans. This is an impressive portrait of Hopkins, a scientific "giant" whose legacy is as huge as the woolly mammoths that he showed to have ranged throughout Beringia. Agents, Anna Cottle and Mary Alice Kier.
(May)
