It was also, at some point, inhabited by people.

The genetic and archaeological evidence for when people first entered Beringia, how long they stayed, and when they first moved south of the ice is still being actively debated.

The most robust evidence currently available suggests that the ancestral population of the Americas underwent a period of relative isolation in Beringia — the “Beringian standstill hypothesis” — during which they accumulated the specific genetic characteristics that distinguish Native Americans from other human populations.

This period of isolation may have lasted for thousands of years before the southward movement into the Americas began.