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Two Crossings On Opposite Sides Of The Earth: Putting Our Ancient Origins In

Perspective

By Ian Beardsley, DeepSeek, And ChatGpt

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I studied four years of Spanish in college, and one thing you learn is that Spain is exciting

culturally and historically; It is on the Iberian Peninsula which sticks out into the ocean, meaning

everyone sailed by it. An example, the Japanese gave them the fans (abanicos) and castanets used

in their ﬂamenco. And, the Arabs crossed into there bringing libraries and mathematics to

Europe. It might be considered “the gateway of the renaissance”.

I know little about archaeology, but I read Lucy by Donald Johanson, which details his discovery

of Lucy, one of the earliest predecessors to humans and he writes it by telling the entire history

of paleoarchaeology, starting with Raymond Dart, to the Leakey’s to today.

Modern paleoarchaeology is often considered to have begun with Raymond Dart’s 1924

discovery of the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus) in South Africa, which provided the

ﬁrst evidence for Africa as the cradle of human evolution.

Being from the Americas, I am, of course, interested in the bridge that brought the Siberians into

the Americas leading to the Native Americans.

Being interested in Spanish History, archaeology of the Americas, and paleoarchaeology out of

interest in human origins, I began to ask DeepSeek and Chat Gpt about two similar things on

opposite sides of the Earth, the Bering Land Bridge and The Straight of Gibraltar, that are the

same thing as they are “crossings” in hopes of connecting the disparate. After having a

conversation with Deep Seek and Chat Gpt, we came up with the following essays…

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Across the Pillars of Hercules: Migrations Through the Strait of Gibraltar

Where the continents of Europe and Africa nearly touch, the Strait of Gibraltar has long served

as both barrier and bridge. This narrow passage—only 13 kilometers wide at its narrowest point

—separates not just landmasses, but entire worlds. Yet, despite its imposing cliffs and

treacherous currents, it has been crossed repeatedly, by humans, herds, and ideas. From

prehistoric wanderers trailing megafauna to the Arab-Berber armies of the 8th century, the Strait

of Gibraltar has stood as one of the most symbolically charged migration points in human

history.

Early Crossings: Shadows of Forgotten Migrations

Long before recorded history, the Strait may have seen some of the earliest maritime crossings

by *Homo sapiens* or even earlier hominins. While the evidence is still debated, the presence of

**Acheulean and Mousterian stone tools**—typically associated with early humans like *Homo

heidelbergensis* and Neanderthals—on **both the North African and Iberian sides of the

Strait** has sparked theories of prehistoric contact or shared cultural horizons.

Though no deﬁnitive proof of open-sea crossings in the Middle Paleolithic has been found, the

existence of similar tool industries on both sides suggests that early humans may have traversed

the narrow passage, perhaps during periods of lower sea levels or by island-hopping across now-

submerged landforms. Herds of migratory animals, whose movements were followed by hunter-

gatherers, could have inspired or enabled such crossings.

These early voyages—if they occurred—represent more than physical journeys. They hint at

cognitive leaps: the ability to plan, to build rafts or boats, and to face the unknown across a

visible yet perilous sea. Gibraltar, in this context, was not merely a boundary, but a *threshold*

in the evolution of human intelligence and exploration.

711 CE: The Arab-Berber Expansion into Iberia

Fast-forward to the dawn of the 8th century. The Strait of Gibraltar again took center stage in a

transformative chapter of human history. In **711 CE**, a mixed army of **Arab and Berber

Muslims**, led by the North African general **Tariq ibn Ziyad**, crossed from Morocco into

what is now Spain. This event marked the beginning of the **Islamic conquest of the Iberian

Peninsula**, a process that would establish **Al-Andalus**—a ﬂourishing Islamic civilization

that endured for centuries.

The very name "Gibraltar" comes from **Jabal Ṭāriq**, or “Mountain of Tariq,” named after the

general whose forces landed at the Rock. Within a few years, most of Iberia had fallen under

Muslim control, ushering in a golden age of cultural fusion. Al-Andalus became a beacon of

scientiﬁc, artistic, and philosophical advancement, where **Jewish, Christian, and Muslim

communities** coexisted in varying degrees of harmony and tension.

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This crossing wasn’t merely a military maneuver—it was a **civilizational transmission**, a

moment when African and Middle Eastern knowledge, technology, and language poured into

Europe. The Strait, once again, served not as a wall but a bridge.

A Portal of Exchange, Not Division

Modern narratives often cast the Strait of Gibraltar as a hard geopolitical line—a gate to be

guarded, a frontier to be policed. But history tells a more ﬂuid story. Like the Bering Land

Bridge in the north, Gibraltar has been a **pathway of movement**, not isolation. While

Beringia linked the Old World with the New during the Ice Age, Gibraltar linked **Africa and

Europe**, **East and West**, and **past and future**.

The echoes of this shared past can still be heard. DNA studies show deep genetic ties between

North Africans and Southern Europeans, the result of millennia of migrations and intermarriages.

Cultural practices, architectural forms, and linguistic traces in Spain and Morocco speak to this

enduring entanglement.

Conclusion: The Sea Between Worlds

From stone tools on wind-blasted cliffs to the sails of Muslim ﬂeets, the Strait of Gibraltar has

served as both crucible and crossroads. It challenges the simplistic division of continents and

cultures. Like the Bering Strait, it reminds us that human history is not bounded by land and sea,

but shaped by our **will to cross them**.

As we reexamine these liminal zones—Beringia to the north, Gibraltar to the south—we uncover

not just pathways of migration, but windows into the **imaginative daring** of our ancestors.

They did not always wait for bridges to form; sometimes, they built them in their minds, then set

out across the deep.

From Beringia to Gibraltar: How Earth's Changing Face Forged Our Past

The story of humanity is inextricably linked to the story of our planet. Our journey across the

globe, the myths we tell, and our very origins are shaped by profound geological forces—the rise

and fall of oceans, the grinding of tectonic plates, and the climatic pulses of ice ages. By tracing

the threads of two iconic land bridges, the Bering Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar, and a

catastrophic ﬂood, we can see how Earth's dynamic history created the stage for human

migration, mythology, and evolution.

The most recent chapter in this saga is the tale of the **Bering Land Bridge**, or Beringia.

During the peak of the last Ice Age, roughly 20,000 years ago, vast quantities of water were

locked in continental glaciers, causing global sea levels to plummet by over 120 meters. This

exposed a vast, grassy plain connecting modern-day Siberia and Alaska. This was not a narrow

bridge but a continent-sized subcontinent, teeming with the game that Paleolithic hunters

followed. For millennia, it served as the gateway to the Americas, allowing the ancestors of all

Indigenous American peoples to enter a new world. Its eventual submergence around 10,000

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years ago, as the ice sheets melted, isolated the Americas, shaping the course of human history in

the Western Hemisphere for millennia until the age of exploration.

This event, however, is just one example of a recurring planetary theme: sea-level change

reshaping continents and pathways. Far earlier and on a more catastrophic scale, the **Strait of

Gibraltar** was the protagonist in a geological drama of stunning magnitude. Approximately six

million years ago, the tectonic collision of Africa and Europe sealed the Strait of Gibraltar. Cut

off from the Atlantic Ocean, the entire Mediterranean Sea evaporated over thousands of years,

leaving a vast, scorching basin of salt deserts over three kilometers deep. This period, known as

the Messinian Salinity Crisis, ended violently around 5.33 million years ago. The natural dam at

Gibraltar catastrophically failed in an event known as the **Zanclean Flood**. Torrents of

Atlantic water poured in, potentially ﬁlling the Mediterranean basin in a matter of years, at a rate

dwarﬁng the ﬂow of all the world's modern rivers combined.

While this event occurred millions of years before humans existed, its specter looms large. The

sheer cataclysm of the Zanclean Flood invites speculation about its connection to global ﬂood

myths, like the story of Noah's Ark. Though it cannot be the direct source, it serves as a powerful

geological analogue for the real, post-glacial ﬂooding that early civilizations witnessed. As the

last Ice Age ended, rising seas drowned coastlines and low-lying lands like Doggerland (which

connected Britain to Europe) and the Persian Gulf, events that likely occurred within human

memory. These traumatic experiences, passed down through generations, could have coalesced

into the universal myth of a great ﬂood, a story of divine punishment and survival. This concept

resonates with theories like those of Graham Hancock, who posits that a lost advanced

civilization was wiped out by such a ﬂood, though this remains ﬁrmly in the realm of speculation

without archaeological evidence.

The timing of the Zanclean Flood points to an even deeper connection: our own biological

origins. The ﬂood occurred around **5.3 million years ago**, a pivotal moment in primate

evolution. Genetic evidence indicates that the lineages leading to modern humans and our closest

cousins, chimpanzees, diverged around **6 to 8 million years ago**. The millions of years

surrounding the Zanclean Flood were thus a critical crucible for our ancestry. We are still

searching for the "artifact" of our last common ancestor with chimps, but fossils from this era,

like *Sahelanthropus tchadensis* from Chad (~7 million years ago) and *Ardipithecus* from

Ethiopia (~5.8-4.4 million years ago), provide clues. These early hominins were experimenting

with a revolutionary adaptation: walking upright. They were not yet human, nor were they like

modern chimps, but generalized apes living in a world still reeling from geological upheaval.

In conclusion, the threads of Beringia, Gibraltar, and human evolution are woven from the same

cloth. The same climatic cycles that lowered sea levels to create a pathway into America also

drowned coastlines and inspired ﬂood myths. And the tectonic forces that sealed and then

violently reopened the Mediterranean operated on a timescale that framed the very dawn of our

evolutionary lineage. Our history did not occur *on* a static planet but was actively forged *by*

a dynamic one. To understand where we came from and the stories we tell, we must look not

only to bones and artifacts but also to the rocks, the seas, and the ever-changing face of the Earth.