As humans spread out of Africa and settled the rest of the world tens of thousands of years ago, one geographic location was the last frontier that people conquered: the North American Arctic. The origins of the first people in the Arctic are somewhat mysterious, and one research team, spurred by the native Elders of Barrow, set out to learn whether today’s Arctic inhabitants are descended from those earliest settlers.
Archaeologists and biological anthropologists have been puzzled by the sudden origins and rapid spread of the Neo-Eskimos, whose arrival in the Americans apparently signaled the demise of the Paleo-Eskimos. Was this rapid spread of the new whaling culture accompanied by the rapid spread of a new population? Were the new cultural artifacts better for survival, spreading to other populations already living in the Arctic? Did the Neo-Eskimos out-compete the Paleo-Eskimos, or did the two groups mesh and give rise to modern Arctic inhabitants? Is the Alaskan North Slope the original homeland of both the Paleo-Eskimos and the Neo-Eskimos in Canada and Greenland? A team of researchers used genetics and archaeology to find the answer.
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The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: How Native Alaskans Spurred Archaeologists To Research Their Origins
