Crossing Ice Age Beringia

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As we understand it, humanity washeld back by difficult terrain from accessing the Americas until about twentythousand years ago.  Even then thepenetration was achieved because of technical prowess in the making ofseaworthy skin kayaks that allowed long distant jumps while occasionallyresting on sea ice.  This was easilysustained by fishing and seal hunting. Penetration was achieved on both coasts.
The west coast naturallychanneled this human expansion along the coast itself with slim opportunitiesfor inland penetration until one reaches Mexico.  The sea naturally held the population to thecoast anyway.
The East Coast was much more likeEurope itself and drew peoples inland aswell.  From this it appears that we hadthe emergence of Cro Magnon.
In either case this process wasboth fast and slow.  Once started, itadvanced inevitably and likely maxed over several thousands of years.  What always gave it pause was the need toestablish new communities every step of the way.  A break away band would strike out to exploitnew fishing grounds and until that band had reached a couple hundred members,the process would not be readily repeated. Thus it was a naturally measured advance into new country.
All this begs the question of howdid the Old World Primates the Sasquatch or Gigantpithecus and possiblyAustralopithecus do the trick also?


We got a clue with the recentobservation of a Sasquatch moving cross country in the Barren lands of Nunavut while clearlyfollowing the caribou migration.  Knowingthat the creature is adapted particularly to temperate forests, this was a bigsurprise.  They have already been foundin the Boreal forest and now they are working open country in the Barrens.
For what it is worth, the onlything rarer than a Sasquatch in the Barrens are human beings.
What this really means is thatthe creature is well adapted to also follow the herds.  Thus it is also well adapted to penetratingthe Americas through theBering plain and ultimately into Alaskaand even south over the ice if game was already doing so.  This was something that humanity would havehad much more difficulty with and such penetration as did occur over that routecame very late.
It may also have been able tofollow the coastal periphery taking advantage of coastal forest elements.  Yet there are some seriously challengingbarriers in the way of all that although the same hold through for theinterior.  In fact tomorrow we will seethat the coastal option was plausible in the depths of the Ice Age itself andmust surely be the first choice.  Newlyexposed seabed would have provided crossing of the intervening island chain atthis time and passable terrain south thereafter.
The bottom line though is thatGigantpithecus is way better adapted to doing this in small family groups than weever were.  He has his fur coat and can stalkand hunt without tools.  Even betterthough is his walking pace.  His strideis two to three times ours and while we can easily get up to twenty to thirtymiles in a day over good ground, he can readily do fifty to a hundred miles inthe same conditions.  Thus he can travela thousand miles in a couple of weeks. This makes crossing extreme country much less daunting.  A long ridge line through ice country is farless a barrier.
The case of Australopithecus isfar trickier.  Our observations have beenpretty well restricted to the Hudson Valley so far althoughthat well likely change as awareness rises. It is possible that they are recent arrivals coinciding with the openingof access with the end of the Ice Age just a few thousand years ago.  However, they also could have followed the Sasquatchalong the Alaskan Coast.
Of course they may have merelytaken ship from Irelandduring the Bronze Age European expansion.