Note: this topic is from 8/28/2014. Thanks afraidfortherepublic, sorry I'd missed this on the first go-round.
Posted on 08/28/2014 4:40:35 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for millennia before vanishing around 700 years ago, a new genetic analysis shows. The study, published online Thursday, also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers.
Inuit hunters in the Canadian Arctic have long told stories about a mysterious ancient people known as the Tunit, who once inhabited the far north. Tunit men, they recalled, possessed powerful magic and were strong enough to crush the neck of a walrus and singlehandedly haul the massive carcass home over the ice. Yet the stories described the Tunit as a reticent people who kept to themselves, avoiding contact with their neighbors.
Many researchers dismissed the tales as pure fiction, but a major new genetic study suggests that parts of these stories were based on actual events.
In a paper to be published Friday in Science, evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev and molecular biologist Maanasa Raghavan, both of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and their colleagues reveal for the first time that the earliest inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic—a group that archaeologists call the Paleo-Eskimos—lived in isolation from their neighbors for nearly 4,000 years, refraining from any mixture with Native Americans to the south or with the ancestors of the modern Inuit.
"Elsewhere, as soon as people meet each other, they have sex," says Willerslev. "Even potentially different species like Neanderthals [and modern humans] had sex, so this finding is extremely surprising."
The new study also proposes a previously unknown migration. Research by other scientists has shown that the first Americans entered the New World at least 15,500 years ago, and that two smaller migrations of hunter-gatherers from Asia followed. The new study indicates that the Paleo-Eskimos entered the Arctic some 5,000 years ago, in a separate migration.
Only One Woman?
Moreover, the team's analysis of the diversity in maternally inherited DNA in their samples suggests that these Paleo-Eskimo migrants included extremely few women. Indeed, it's possible there was just one adventurous female among the founding population. "I can't remember any other group having such low diversity," says Willerslev.
Geneticist and anthropologist Jennifer Raff, at the University of Texas, Austin, who was not a member of the team, thinks the new analysis is a major step forward in Arctic studies.
"This research has answered several important questions about North American Arctic prehistory," she says. The study now shows, for example, that the Paleo-Eskimos arrived separately from the ancestors of the Inuit, and remained genetically distinct.
Burial Practices Create Challenges
Finding enough ancient DNA for the project was not easy, however. Although the team obtained bone, teeth, or hair samples from 169 ancient human remains from Arctic Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, few samples yielded well-preserved DNA.
The explanation, the researchers discovered, lay in ancient Arctic burial practices. Many groups buried their dead on the surface, rather than attempting to dig a grave in rock-hard Arctic permafrost. So the bodies underwent repeated freezing and thawing, a process that damaged or destroyed the ancient DNA.
The poor preservation meant that the team could obtain whole genome data from only 26 of the ancient samples. Moreover, the highest coverage was just 30 percent of the genome, and most samples yielded 10 percent or less.
But the study's authors, says Raff, made the best of the situation by taking account of the DNA damage and the missing data in their analyses, and by "extracting the most information possible out of difficult samples."
A Puzzling People
The new findings are bound to stir fresh interest in the Paleo-Eskimos, a group that has long puzzled archaeologists. To the bewilderment of many researchers, the Paleo-Eskimos discarded the technologically advanced bows and arrows they brought from Asia, preferring instead to hunt with larger and heavier lances that required closer contact with dangerous game.
And over time, the Paleo-Eskimos developed an almost cult-like way of life, known as the Dorset culture. The Dorset developed an intense tradition of shamanistic art, seen in the human and animal figurines they carved from antler and walrus ivory.
"They were a very strange and conservative people," says anthropologist William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution. But their strong spiritual beliefs may help explain their insularity, he adds. The Dorset could have abstained from intermarriage with others to ensure the purity and stability of their ritual life.
The ancestors of the modern Inuit, who arrived in the Canadian Arctic a thousand years ago, with dog sleds, large skin boats, and sophisticated archery equipment, seem to have been equally puzzled by the Dorset. But when the last of the Dorset vanished from the Arctic some 300 years later—possibly as a result of deadly diseases brought to the New World by Viking traders—Inuit storytellers preserved their memory in tales of the Tunit.
Ping!
“They were a very strange and conservative people,” says anthropologist William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution. But their strong spiritual beliefs may help explain their insularity, he adds. The Teapartyers could have abstained from intermarriage with liberals to ensure the purity and stability of their ritual life.
Obviously the Dorset Paleo-Eskimos came from Dorsetshire in England. And they didn’t disappear, they are still alive and their one woman is Sarah Palleon.
BIGFOOT?
My exact thoughts when I read that!
To the bewilderment of many researchers, the Paleo-Eskimos discarded the technologically advanced bows and arrows they brought from Asia, preferring instead to hunt with larger and heavier lances that required closer contact with dangerous game.
I don’t suppose it occurred to the researchers that
maybe advanced bows didn’t work too well in that
cold/wet climate?
Reminds me of an ex-girlfriend.
Were these the paleo-global warmers-coolers-changers?
Who would’ve known?
I'm sure a cold wet climate would hurt such items. And the advancement of teamwork and other ingenuity would result in different forms of hunting.
Um... not this neighborhood.
/johnny
Run a lance through a seal’s neck and he isn’t getting back down that ice hole he came up in.
True.
Doesn't do a whole lot of good for flintlock firearms either.
Now I’m not up on the nuances of early frontier combat, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. Aren’t early firearms also susceptible to wet weather? Sure there are some things that can be done to seal things up to keep power dry, and most of the sinew bowstrings I have seen were treated in one way or another to make them more or less, waterproof. Also water doesn’t really destroy sinew it makes it flexible and stretchy, but bowstrings were generally pre-stretched. In either case, it doesn’t seem like the means of dealing with wet weather are foolproof, so it doesn’t seem like it would change the odds all that much. By the time waterproof cartridges came out the indians were using firearms as well and it wasn’t uncommon for Indians to have more advanced guns than the infantry (though I’m sure the Army faced groups of Indians with a wide range of armaments).
As far as the Inuit are concerned I know they had to get to sophisticated lengths to make bows from materials that could be obtained in the far north. The cable backed bow is the first type that comes to mind. I imagine at some point before these clever designs were invented bows would have been a great disadvantage to far north hunters. Another interesting tidbit I learned about the arctic and subarctic tribes from the explorer Samuel Hearne’s journal “A Journey to the Northern Ocean” is that they traded so extensively amongst themselves that they frequently managed to obtain guns before ever meeting a European. However, if you were in a tribe was disliked by tribes who had made contact with the fur trade then you were in trouble.
The Thule killed off the Dorset. Oral tradition said the Dorset were peaceful and without bow and arrow[Oral tradition from Thule]. Easy pickings.
The Thule[Skræling] then reverse colonized Greenland from the Vikings. The Thule were notorious for their fighting and such.
Prior to those groups in Greenland were the Saqqaq, their closest living relatives are the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia!.
Note: this topic is from 8/28/2014. Thanks afraidfortherepublic, sorry I'd missed this on the first go-round.
“refraining from any mixture with Native Americans to the south or with the ancestors of the modern Inuit.”
Well, that lack of genetic diversity certainly solves the mystery how that group/tribe went extinct in a few centuries...
There were some tribes/groups that were breeding snobs-they went extinct, like the Mohicans, and apparently, these Paleo Indians-a lot of other tribes declined in numbers until they woke up, smelled the coffee, and made some marriage alliances. Marrying relatives really screws up fertility after awhile.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
