But they were modern human beings — Homo sapiens with the same cognitive capacities, the same general physical adaptations, and the same ability to learn, innovate, and transmit cultural knowledge as any people living today.

They had the capacity to develop the cold-climate technologies that arctic survival requires.

And, critically, the people who appear to have been in eastern Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum were the descendants of populations that had been living in the cold environments of northeastern Asia for tens of thousands of years — they were not approaching cold-climate survival without preparation.

The specific technologies of Last Glacial Maximum Beringia are not well-documented in the archaeological record, partly because many sites from this period are now underwater (beneath the waters of the Bering Sea and North Pacific, which rose as the ice sheets melted after the Last Glacial Maximum) and partly because organic materials — wood, fiber, hide, bone tools — rarely survive in contexts where they can be confidently dated.