Compare the importance of water to the settlement of the Penobscot River Basin with the importance of water to the settlement of the Central American land bridge.

As temperatures warmed across Beringia beginning around 18,000 years ago, very small numbers of people pushed into Northeastern Siberia and onto the land bridge. Perhaps they encountered the descendants of the Beringian standstill population, also on the move. They brought with them a stone technology from Siberia, Mongolia, or even Japan that was ideal for hunters traveling in very cold environments. Their barbed hunting weapons were comprised of small, very sharp “microblades” knocked off from lumps of fine-grained rocks. They also hunted with spears tipped with nicely flaked stone projectile points. Fortunately for archaeologists, we can trace the distribution of these distinctive technologies over very long distances. Both the edge-shaped blanks used to make microblades and small, teardrop-shaped spear points appear in Alaska as early as 14,000 years ago.

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