First Artic Peoples Not the Inuit

I saw this rather intriguing article a few days ago, an excerpt which appears below.

Migration pulses into the Americas

In the archaeological literature, distinctions are drawn between the different cultural units in the Arctic in the period up to the rise of the Thule culture, which replaced all previous Arctic cultures and is the source of today’s Inuit in Alaska, Canada and Greenland. The earlier cultures included the Saqqaq or Pre-Dorset and Dorset, comprising the Palaeo tradition, with the Dorset being further divided into three phases. All of these had distinctive cultural, lifestyle and subsistence traits as seen in the archaeological record. There were also several periods during which the Arctic was devoid of human settlement. These facts have further raised questions regarding the possibility of several waves of migration from Siberia to Alaska, or perhaps Native Americans migrating north during the first 4,000 years of the Arctic being inhabited.

“Our study shows that, genetically, all of the different Palaeo-population cultures belonged to the same group of people. On the other hand, they are not closely related to the Thule culture, and we see no indication of assimilation between the two groups. We have also ascertained that the Palaeo-population were not descendants of the Native Americans. The genetics reveals that there must have been at least three separate pulses of migration from Siberia into the Americas and the Arctic. First came the ancestors of today’s Native Americans, then came the Palaeo-population, and finally the ancestors of today’s Inuit,” says Eske Willerslev.

Inuit family circa 1917. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The genetic studies confirm a growing body of knowledge that shows that migrations of early humans was far more complex than was otherwise considered.