What is Beringia?
The term Beringia comes from the name of Vitus Jonassen Bering, a Danish-born captain-komandor navigator in service of the Russian Navy in the 18th Century. In 1725-1730 and 1733-1741 Bering headed the First and the Second Kamchatka Expeditions. During these expeditions the vessels commaned by Bering and Aleksey Chirikov explored the waters of the North Pacific between Asia and North America including the strait that lies between Chukotka Peninsula and Seward Peninsula. This strait and one of the Commander Islands, are now bare his name. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, E. Hulten, the Swedish botanist who in 1920s was working on a compilation of the flora of Alaska, Yukon Territory, Kamchatka Peninsula, and northeastern Siberia began to use the word “Beringia” as a geographic description. Today, we use the term to describe a vast area between the Kolyma River in the Russian Northeast and the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is a region of worldwide significa
