The Siberian Yupik — St. Lawrence Island and Diomede Islands
When the World Was Water
A great creature raised its back from the sea floor and the first land appeared above the waters
Honoring oral tradition through audio narration
The Siberian Yupik live on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, sitting closer to Siberia than to mainland Alaska. Their people are the descendants of those who first crossed from Asia to the Americas, or those who stayed in the middle.
In the beginning, there was only the sea. The world was a sea world, and everything lived in or on the water. Then, slowly, a great creature moved along the bottom of the sea and raised its back, and where its back broke the surface, the first land appeared.
On this land, the people were placed. They were not made from clay or from a pod — they simply appeared, already knowing how to hunt and make fire and build shelter. They knew these things because they had been taught them before the world existed.
The Siberian Yupik remember the great flood as the sea itself rising — the gradual inundation of the land bridge that had connected Asia and America. Oral traditions describe a time when the continents were connected. Then the water came and divided them.
Cultural Significance
St. Lawrence Island is a geological remnant of the Bering land bridge. The flooding of Beringia at the end of the Ice Age is one of the most significant events in human prehistory. The Siberian Yupik may preserve the most literal memory: the memory of land disappearing under the sea.