Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53 (2) 2025   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2025.53.2.115-125

Annotation:  The Peopling of Mongolia by Homo sapiens denisovan The Earliest Snake Images in the Middle Irtysh Region The Ukok Plateau, an Archaeological Gem of the Altai: 35 Years Later An Unusual Bronze Figurine from the Samartai Museum, Yakutia: The “Thingin-Itself” and Semantic Cont Raman Spectroscopy Analysis of Pigments from the Boyary I Rock Art Site, Khakassia On the Identifi cation of Anonymous Artists in Rock Art Cremation Burials at Ust-Zelinda-2, the Northern Angara Region: Typology and Chronology of Artifacts Early Iron Age Ceramics from the Ust-Polui Ritual and Production Center: Aspects of Technology On Dating Archaeological Sites Evidencing Ferrous Metallurgy in the Southeastern Altai, based on Rad The Relationship Between Archaic Construction Methods in Pottery and Architecture in Central Asia The Siungkap-Ungkapon Ritual in the Batak Toba Community: Archaeological and Agricultural Aspects The Northwest Coast of North America as the Main Route from Beringia to the New World: The Evidence Ethno-Cultural Aspects of Siberian Regional Identity (Late 20th to the First Decades of the 21st Cen An Upper Second Molar from Akhshtyrskaya Cave and Population Affi nities of the Middle Paleolithic H Genetic Portraits of the Yakut Regional Populations (Based on Y-Chromosome Polymorphism Data)   

The Northwest Coast of North America as the Main Route from Beringia to the New World: The Evidence of Mythology

Y.E. Berezkin

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

Data on the distribution of folklore and mythological motifs in the New World are analyzed. Their areas agree with the idea that early migrants moved along the Pacific coast of North America. The Columbian Plateau with the adjacent part of the coast could have been a hub whence people dispersed to the south, southeast, and east. The transfer of cultural elements along the Mackenzie Corridor is supported neither by the distribution of mythological episodes and images nor by archaeological evidence (the latter suggests an oppositely directed migration in the Terminal Pleistocene—from the main territory of the U.S. to Alaska). North American and South American narrative episodes and mythological motifs are separated by a huge geographic gap: Many migrant populations seem to have rapidly reached South America, leaving certain groups behind. While in America distribution areas of motifs follow recognizable patterns, in the Old World the same motifs are scattered from Europe to the Pacific, which may attest to the heterogeneity of the Beringian population immediately before the migration to the New World. Besides the main (early) episode of peopling, data on the areal distribution of motifs reveal three or four later episodes.

Keywords: Peopling of America, Beringia, Mackenzie Corridor, Northwest Coast, Columbia Plateau, comparative mythology