Crossroads of Continents




Northeastern Siberia and Alaska - the rugged and remote lands that rim the North Pacific - were among the last regions on earth to be described by Western explorers and cartographers, or to be coveted in the courts of Europe and Russia. The North Pacific remained a great blank on world maps until well into the 18th century, less known to outsiders than the unexplored heart of Africa. Yet this vast northern wilderness of mountains, forests, tundra and ice, geographically linking the continents of Eurasia and North America, was in no sense an uninviting wasteland. Human populations began moving into Northeastern Siberia over 16,000 years ago from the more temperate regions of eastern Asia, spreading north and east with the passing of the last Ice Age until they crossed into the Americas via Alaska. That great migration was only the beginning of the story... Crossroads of Continents combines modern research in North Pacific anthropology and archeology with the presentation of many important objects from early collections. This exhibition attempts to capture the wide diversity of North Pacific cultures as well as their historical development from the end of the last Ice Age to the modern day. The original exhibit travelled through the United States and will soon be on tour in Russia. This exhibit has been recreated in a "virtual" architectural space that exists only as a set of coordinates in a computer 3D modelling program. You can wander through this "museum" with a few clicks of the mouse. Our introductory offering consists of a view of the outside of the building and the first room of the exhibit, the "Hall of the People." The architecture of this space was designed to reflect elements of the building styles of the peoples of the Crossroads area, including hooped hemispherical construction, locally available materials, arched entrance passages, and the roof-holes commonly used to symbolize passage between the worlds and between different states of being. This will be an evolving Web space, offering additional rooms in the exhibit over the coming months. We invite you to enter the exhibition... Multimedia Help: This exhibit is best viewed with Netscape or the Internet Explorer browser, and makes use of multimedia elements such as video (Video for Windows and Quicktime) and sound (Internet Wave). We'd like to recommend that you download the helper applications or plugins that will allow you to play these files, if you haven't done so already. While you can explore the exhibit without them, your experience will definitely be enhanced. Viewing Images: Most of the images in this exhibit are encoded using the "Progressive JPEG" format. This format loads images relatively quickly at low resolution, and then sharpens the resolution in repeated passes. The advantage of this format is that it allows the viewer to see a rough version of the image almost immediately, which is especially appropriate for this "virtual exhibit" because it helps maintain a seamless flow as you wander through the museum. Current versions of most of the major browsers support this format; if yours doesn't, you'll need either to upgrade to a more recent version or download a new browser to view the exhibit. Currently supporting this format are: Netscape 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0, NSCA Mosaic 2.11 (Win) or 3.0 (Mac), and Spyglass Enhanced Mosaic 2.1, as well as a number of others. Click here to see the JPEG-FAQ; question 15 will give you the most recent complete list. Spyglass Mosaic is included in a number of commercial products. Click here for more information from the Spyglass Web site. On some pages, you'll see below the navigation bar the name of a sound or music file, next to the Internet Wave (Iwave) logo. You'll need to have downloaded and installed the free Iwave player to hear these sounds. Navigation Notes:Back to top Once you enter the exhibit, you'll see a "viewport" on the left side of the screen that shows what you see as you wander through the museum. Clicking in this image will move your viewpoint in the direction you click in (i.e., clicking on the right side of the image moves you to the right, clicking on the left moves you to the left, etc.). Just below this image is a navigation bar (based on an ivory "drillbow" from the original exhibit), which will have other options for movement through the exhibit; just click on the option of your choice. If you have the Internet Wave player installed on your computer, and would like to hear the music while you view the exhibit, the recommended procedure is to click on the first Iwave file (at the entrance to the museum). This will load the player and start the music. Once the music has started, you can click on the "minimize" arrow in the upper right corner of the player to keep it from obstructing your view. The music will continue to play even if you leave the page you loaded it from, so you can enjoy it as a background to your browsing. If you encounter another sound file you'd like to hear before the first one is done playing, you may click on it and it will simply replace the current music. The Iwave player takes very little memory, so you may wish to leave it open while you browse through the exhibit, as this will speed up the loading of new sound files when you encounter them.