Matthew Walls<\/a> at the University of Calgary in Canada and his colleagues surveyed the Kitsissut Islands, also known as the Carey Islands, north-west of Greenland. The islands lie in the Pikialasorsuaq polynya, an area of open water surrounded by sea ice. Studies of marine sediments indicate that the polynya only formed about 4500 years ago.<\/p>\nThe researchers focused on the three central islands: Isbj\u00f8rne, Mellem and Nordvest. They found five sites with a total of 297 archaeological features. The biggest clusters were on Isbj\u00f8rne, along beach terraces. There, the team found traces of 15 circular tents, each divided into two halves by stones, with a central hearth. These \u201cbilobate\u201d tents are characteristic of the Paleo-Inuit, the first peoples to reach northern Canada and Greenland.<\/p>\n
Walls and his colleagues radiocarbon-dated a single wing bone from a seabird called a thick-billed murre, found in one of the tent rings. They estimate the bone is 4400 to 3938 years old. This indicates that people were on the Kitsissut Islands by this time, very soon after the polynya formed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a nesting colony of thick-billed murre,\u201d says Walls. People would have collected their eggs and hunted them for meat. He suspects they also hunted seals.<\/p>\n
The Paleo-Inuit were already on Greenland by this time and probably voyaged west from there to Kitsissut, says Walls. \u201cThe shortest distance is about 52.7 kilometres.\u201d However, given prevailing currents and winds, they probably set off from a more northerly point, resulting in a longer but safer journey. To the west of Kitsissut is Ellesmere Island, which today is part of Canada, but it is further away and the currents in between are challenging.<\/p>\n
The only comparable sea journey known from Arctic prehistory is the crossing of the 82-kilometre Bering Strait, from Siberia into Alaska, which was probably first made at least 20,000 years ago. However, the Diomede Islands serve as a stopping point halfway across.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did have to have some sophisticated watercraft in order to cross that stretch of water,\u201d says Darwent. Given the size of the community on Kitsissut, single-person kayaks wouldn\u2019t have been enough. \u201cIt is whole families, and you\u2019re not going to be able to take kids and maybe elderly across into that sort of area with kayaks,\u201d he says. Instead, the Paleo-Inuit must have used larger craft that could carry perhaps nine or 10 people.<\/p>\n
No boat remains were found on Kitsissut, and such remains are scarce in the Arctic. \u201cThey would have been skin-on-frame watercraft,\u201d says Walls, like those used by later Inuit communities.<\/p>\n
These first Paleo-Inuit settlers would have helped shape the ecosystem of Kitsissut, says Walls. By bringing nutrients in from the sea and leaving their waste on land, they fertilised the barren soils and enabled vegetation to grow on the islands. \u201cYou have rich vegetation there, at least at the start, that\u2019s dependent in some ways on humans who are part of the cycling of nutrients between those systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Arctic expedition cruise with Dr Russell Arnott: Svalbard, Norway<\/p>\n
Embark on an unforgettable marine expedition to the Arctic, accompanied by marine biologist Russell Arnott.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Topics:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A site on Isbj\u00f8rne Island where Palaeo-Inuit people erected a circular tent Matthew Walls, Mari Kleist, Pauline Knudsen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[18380,192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-457812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-archaeology","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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