The Last Giant of Beringia

For health reasons, and to be nearer their children and grand-children, Dave and Rachel Hopkins moved back to Menlo Park, California, in the summer of 1999. In late October 2001, after this manuscript was written, but before it was published, Dave suffered a number of medical setbacks. He elected to discontinue dialysis, knowing that it meant he would have only a week or two to live. As word spread, friends called from all over the world to tell him what an inspiration he had been, what an honor it had been to be his friend. For those working in the learned occupations, Hopkins’ life had been a model, marked by his intrepid curiosity, his interest in and mastery of an astonishing array of subjects, his subordination of ego to the advancement of knowledge, his sense of public service, his mentoring of students and protégés. He had not only added importantly to our understanding of the world, he’d taught us a lot about how to live.

Part of the time, Dave seemed to know exactly what was happening, but he frequently slipped into periods of delightful confusion. As his daughter Dana said, “His mind is all over the place, but in neat places.” When I called from Fairbanks, he at first thought I was at the door to his apartment building, phoning to be buzzed in. I tried to explain, but he said, “Well then why don’t you jump in your jalopy and come on over?” I said again that I was at home, in Alaska. He said with anticipation, “I should be going home at the end of the week.” Once, say his children, he stood unsteadily in the living room, pointing to the wall, annotating the geological strata revealed there in the icy cutbank. When his kids tried to coax him into sitting on the couch, he refused until they began referring to the couch as a cot, so joining him at his field camp.

His friend Andrei Sher offered these words to Hopkins’ friends, assembled at a memorial service: “Beringia—a huge land that in the nearest past joined together the Old and New Worlds, Eurasia and America, Russia and USA, Siberia and Alaska—was used to giants. Those big woollies—they wandered from one world to another, transferring and spreading their skills, knowledge and personal experience to the rest of the world as a genetic contribution to the Evolution of Life. Most of them died out about ten thousand years ago. The last giant of Beringia, Dave Hopkins, died on Friday, November 2, 2001.”

One day, shortly before he became bedridden, Hopkins accompanied his daughter to meet her son at school. Coincidentally, the boy’s seventh grade class had been studying the land bridge and knew about Hopkins, knew him as the superstar of Beringian science. When he entered the room, and the teacher told the kids who he was, they burst into a spontaneous cheer. As happened in the midst of another collection of scholars in Siberia many years earlier, this group also clamored for a few words from the honored visitor. And though any recollection of the Soviet scientists chanting his name had faded from Hopkins’ memory, this acclamation, no doubt equally valued, took its place in his memory during his last days.