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CVI - The Arctic

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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Created: February 29, 2000. Last update: June 02, 2006
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