Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Arctic's Earliest People

National Geographic ^ | 8-28-14 | Heather Pringle

[afraidfortherepublic]

Ping!

[tet68]

“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.

[Telepathic Intruder]

"But when the last of the Dorset vanished from the Arctic some 300 years later...

They probably had their own liberals.

[GreyFriar]

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.

[Red_Devil 232]

BIGFOOT?

[Inyo-Mono]

My exact thoughts when I read that!

[tet68]

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?

[SIDENET]

"Elsewhere, as soon as people meet each other, they have sex,"

Reminds me of an ex-girlfriend.

[x1stcav]

Were these the paleo-global warmers-coolers-changers?

Who would’ve known?

[familyop]

"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."

A heavy lance can be much better for stopping large or dangerous game, where much penetration, especially through bone, is very important. It could also be used by concealed hunters with ruminants driven to them by friends.

[Theoria]

I read somewhere in my youth that if you wanted to fight a band of Indians. Ya did it in the rain. Water damages sinew and if any of the products were using such material, ie bowstring, it would hamper such weapons.

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.

[JRandomFreeper]

Elsewhere, as soon as people meet each other, they have sex

Um... not this neighborhood.

/johnny

[eartrumpet]

Run a lance through a seal’s neck and he isn’t getting back down that ice hole he came up in.

[familyop]

True.

[Sherman Logan]

I read somewhere in my youth that if you wanted to fight a band of Indians. Ya did it in the rain. Water damages sinew and if any of the products were using such material, ie bowstring, it would hamper such weapons.

Doesn't do a whole lot of good for flintlock firearms either.

[Bill93]

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.

[Theoria]

Interesting times back then. And technology and expansion is always constant.

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!.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 8/28/2014. Thanks afraidfortherepublic, sorry I'd missed this on the first go-round.

[Texan5]

“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.