The specific sinkhole that became Bering Sinkhole was not chosen at random.

It was chosen — deliberately, repeatedly, across 5,500 years — for reasons that we cannot directly recover from the physical evidence but that we can partially infer.

The most likely explanation is a combination of practical and symbolic factors.

From a practical standpoint, Bering Sinkhole was a natural feature that served the specific purpose of a burial ground — a place where the dead could be deposited in a way that protected them from scavenging animals and from casual disturbance, while also connecting them to the underground world that the plateau’s cosmology associated with the dead.

Once established as a burial site, it would have become increasingly significant with each subsequent use — its identity as a sacred place reinforced by the accumulation of ancestors within it.