The Arctic
Robert McGhee
Curator of the archaeology of Nunavut
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Most Canadians think of the Arctic as a barren and inhospitable land,
a region that is barely capable of supporting human occupation. Few are
aware of this area's long history of habitation by the ancestors of the
Indians and the Eskimos. Yet it is from the northwestern Canadian Arctic
that we have convincing evidence of the earliest human presence in the
New World. At least 20,000 years ago, this area was inhabited by Palaeolithic
hunters of mammoth and other large game. Following the retreat of the last
Ice Age glaciers, ancestral Indians pursued the animals northwards, and
by at least 8,000 years ago, they had advanced beyond the tree line. Eskimos
or Eskimo-like peoples inhabited the northernmost regions of the High Arctic
as early as 4,000 years ago.
The prehistoric inhabitants of arctic Canada were hunters and fishermen,
and for them, the region provided a decent subsistence. It is a general
rule of ecology that the farther one travels from the equator towards the
poles, the fewer species of animals one finds. The populations of these
few species, however, are relatively large. Extreme seasonal changes in
arctic climate affect all aspects of animal life. Migration, the availability
of food and the bearing of young occasion dense seasonal concentrations
of many species. These factors combine to make hunting and fishing in the
Arctic a very productive activity. Once one knows when the caribou are
migrating across a certain lake, when the char are running in a river,
or where the seal and walrus concentrate because of local ice conditions,
it is possible to kill large numbers of these animals in a short time.
Farther to the south, hunters must spend more time searching for widely
scattered game and can make only isolated kills. Thus, for hunting peoples,
the Arctic has always been an attractive place to live. Indeed, the region
appears to have been occupied as soon as technologies were developed that
permitted people to protect themselves from the extremes of arctic winters,
and to pursue and kill arctic animals.
Since the Indians and the Eskimos of arctic Canada left no written records,
and oral traditions extend only a few generations into the past, almost
all that we know of the history of the region must come from archaeological
research. By excavating and studying the remains of the villages and camps
occupied by prehistoric peoples, we can obtain at least a vague idea of
their way of life. The remains of houses or tent foundations tell us the
approximate size of the settlements. The bones of animals killed for food
are usually well preserved in the frozen arctic soil and permit the archaeologist
to describe the people's diet. The same bones, as well as charcoal from
cooking fires, can be analyzed by the radiocarbon dating method, in order
to determine the approximate age of the settlement. The archaeologist discovers
how various prehistoric arctic technologies changed over time by examining
tools and weapons that were lost or discarded by a site's occupants and
comparing them with objects found in other excavations.
The study of modern or historic populations in the Arctic assists archaeologists
in their study of the region's prehistoric peoples. Prior to the introduction
of European materials and ideas, the Eskimos and Indians who occupy the
area today had ways of life that they had learned from their ancestors.
Our knowledge of these peoples provides invaluable clues that assist in
the reconstruction of the life of the prehistoric population. This method
has a somewhat limited usefulness, however, as cultural patterns in the
Arctic have changed rapidly as the people adapt to changing environmental
conditions. As we shall see, many of the prehistoric peoples with whom
we are dealing had a way of life that was quite different from that of
their descendants of recent centuries.
The history of the Eskimos and the Indians may also be traced, to a
limited extent, through the study of their languages and physical or racial
characteristics. For example, all of the people known as Eskimos speak
languages that are related to one another and that, therefore, must have
derived from a single ancestral language. The Inuit of arctic Canada speak
one of these Eskimo languages. The Eskimo languages are related to that
of the Aleut people of the Aleutian Islands, suggesting that both peoples
are descended from a common population of the distant past. Similarly,
the Eskimo and Aleut languages are distantly related to those of the Chukchi,
Koryak and Kamchadal peoples of northeastern Siberia. This suggests an
Asiatic origin for the Eskimos and the Aleuts -- a theory supported by
the fact that their languages are unrelated to those of any North American
Indians.
The racial characteristics of these northern peoples tell a similar
story. The Eskimos and the Aleuts have been grouped together with several
northeastern Siberian populations in a category known as Arctic Mongoloid,
characterized particularly by very flat facial features. The Indian populations
of northern Canada and Alaska, however, do not show these features and
have a greater similarity to Indian populations in more southerly regions.
This again suggests a different history, with the Indians deriving their
ancestry from the south and the Eskimos being more closely related to Siberian
peoples. The Eskimos may have originated in Asia subsequent to the migration
of the Indians' ancestors to North America.
Given the limitations of our current knowledge of Arctic prehistory,
it should not be surprising that many aspects remain vague and uncertain.
Because this brief volume omits many of the details and arguments of interest
only to archaeologists, the reader may get the impression that Arctic prehistory
is straightforward and well understood. That is certainly not the case,
and one should realize that our understanding is based on the excavation
of a relatively small number of archaeological sites. We can be certain
that future archaeological investigation will modify our present statements
and clarify many of the details that are now obscure.
Palaeolithic Hunters (20,000 - 10,000 B.C.)
Early Indian Occupations (10,000 - 2000 B.C.)
Immigrants from Siberia (8000 - 2000 B.C.)
The Early Palaeoeskimos (2000 - 1000 B.C.)
Dorset Palaeoeskimo Culture (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1400)
Development of Alaskan Eskimo Culture (2000 B.C.
- A.D. 1000)
Thule Culture (A.D. 1000 - 1600)
The Little Ice Age and the Historic Inuit (A.D.
1600 - 1850)
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