Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos Migrated from Alaska's North Slope

New genetic testing of Iñupiat people currently living in Alaska's North Slope has determined the migration patterns and ancestral pool of the people who populated the North American Arctic over the last 5,000 years and found that all mitochondrial DNA haplogroups previously found in the ancient remains of Neo- and Paleo-Eskimos and living Inuit peoples from across the North American Arctic were found within the people living in North Slope villages.

The findings support the archaeological model that the "peopling of the eastern Arctic" began in the North Slope, in an eastward migration from Alaska to Greenland. It also provides new evidence to support the hypothesis that there were two major migrations to the east from the North Slope at two different times in history. There hadn't been a clear biological link found in the DNA of the Paleo-Eskimos, the first people to spread from Alaska into the eastern North American arctic, and the DNA of Neo-Eskimos, a more technologically sophisticated group that later spread very quickly from Alaska and the Bering Strait region to Greenland and seemed to replace the Paleo-Eskimo.

"This is the first evidence that genetically ties all of the Iñupiat and Inuit populations from Alaska, Canada and Greenland back to the Alaskan North Slope," said Northwestern's M. Geoffrey Hayes, senior author of the new study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. "Our study suggests that the Alaskan North Slope serves as the homeland for both of those groups, during two different migrations. We found DNA haplogroups of both ancient Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos in Iñupiat people living in the North Slope today."

At the request of Iñupiat elders from Barrow, Alaska, who are interested in using scientific methods to learn more about the history of their people, Hayes and a team of scientists extracted DNA from saliva samples given by 151 volunteers living in eight different North Slope communities. This is the first genetic study of modern-day Iñupiat people. The authors sequenced and analyzed only mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child, with few changes from generation to generation. 98 percent of the maternal linages in this group were of Arctic descent. The scientists found all known Arctic-specific haplogroups present in these North Slope communities. The haplogroups are: A2a, A2b, D4b1a and D2.

D2 is the known haplogroup of ancient Paleo-Eskimos. Until this study D2 had only been found in the remains of ancient Paleo-Eskimos. D4b1a is a known haplogroup of the ancient Neo-Eskimos, the much more technologically sophisticated group that came after the Paleo-Eskimos and seemed to replace them and populate a large part of the Arctic in a short amount of time.

"We think the presence of these two haplotypes in villages of the North Slope means that the Paleo-Eskimos and the Neo-Eskimos were both ancestors of the contemporary Iñupiat people," said Jennifer A. Raff, first author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow in Hayes' lab at the Feinberg School when the research was being done. "We will be exploring these connections in the future with additional genetic markers."

Another haplogroup that surfaced in this study was C4. This is typically only seen in Native Americans much farther south. Its geographic distribution suggests that it might have been one of the haplogroups carried by the earliest peoples to enter the Americas. The researchers think it could be seen in the North Slope because of recent marriages between Athapascan and Iñupiat families or because it is a remnant of a much more ancient contact between these groups. Additional authors of this study are Margarita Rzhetskaya of Northwestern and Justin Tackney of the University of Utah. The National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs funded the study (grant numbers OPP-0732846 and OPP-0732857).
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Reference:

Science 2.0. 2015. “Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos Migrated from Alaska's North Slope”. Science 2.0. Posted: April 29, 2015. Available online: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/paleoeskimos_and_neoeskimos_migrated_from_alaskas_north_slope-155179

Quinhagak Residents Hopeful Hair Samples will Unlock More Mysteries About Ancestors

An archaeological dig near Quinhagak, in Southwest Alaska, contributed the largest set of genetic samples for a groundbreaking DNA study of Arctic indigenous people released this summer. The study answers longstanding questions about migrations of the ancient Alaska Native people, on the state’s west coast and the local people hope to learn even more about their own ancestors.

The project, called Nunalleq, meaning ‘old village’, is located five miles outside Quinhagak. Dr. Rick Knecht is an archaeologist with the University of Aberdeen in Scotland who manages the dig. He says permafrost at the ancient Yup’ik village of Araliq, preserved artifacts up to 700-years-old made of wood and leather that normally would have disintegrated. Knecht says that most sites in the lower 48 provide just ‘stones and bones’, but at the Araliq site they get: “Things like utensils that people used in their daily lives. We get bentwood bowls and scoops. We get ul’us with the handles still on them. We get grass baskets for example, complete grass baskets and woven mats. We’re getting things like weapons and kayak parts, masks and artwork, things that you normally just see in museums. And these all date from between about 1400 and 1600 AD,” said Knecht.

And hundreds of hair samples Knecht says, likely clippings from haircuts were also preserved at the site. Some of those clippings contributed to the study of indigenous Alaskans that was featured in the journal, Science, this summer.

“We contributed about 33 hair samples to the study and I think that’s more than any of the sites were able to produce. Just because of the extraordinary preservation here,” said Knecht.

There were 169 samples analyzed in the study. The study, led by a group of Danish researchers revealed that the modern Inuit people, including those in Alaska are descended from the Thule, who developed around 700-hundred years ago, replacing an earlier population, the Paleo-Eskimos. The genetic evidence shows there was very little interbreeding, and that the Thule are the ancestors of the Yup’ik and Inupiat people living on Alaska’s west coast today.

“We don’t know the origins of that, of what we call the Thule population or the Neo-Eskimos. But we do know that both in the archaeological evidence, both the artifacts and the genetics look very much alike, surprisingly so, on the two ends of the arctic, which is the largest indigenous territory of any group in the world,” said Knecht.

Knecht says the donation of the hair clippings from the Araliq site was the sole contribution for the study from Alaska.

Warren Jones is the President of the village corporation in Quinhagak, Qanirtuuq Inc. He says they agreed to work with the archaeologists because they want to learn more about the people who they believe may be their ancestors. “The archeologists know what they’re doing. And everything they dig out is going to be brought back to us. So it will be back here for our future, children, generations. Now our future kids, grandkids they’ll be able to see what our ancestors lived, how they lived, what they used, the tools they made. All the little stories are coming alive,” said Jones.

Jones says the corporation is interested in comparing the DNA of the ancient people of Araliq with the modern residents of Quinhagak.

“We might get to see who was related to the people of Araliq, that’s pretty cool,” said Jones.

Jones says the corporation in Quinhagak eventually wants to develop ecotourism around the archeological site, but rapid erosion at the site has made getting artifacts out a priority.'

Knecht says it requires a certain level of trust for Native people to allow genetic material to be released for studies, and the over the past five years of the project researchers from the University of Aberdeen and Native people in Quinhagak have built that trust.

The project is funded by Qanirtuuq Inc. and through a $1.8 million dollar grant from the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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Eaton, Daysha. 2014. “Quinhagak Residents Hopeful Hair Samples will Unlock More Mysteries About Ancestors”. KYUK. Posted: October 2, 2014. Available online: http://kyuk.org/hair-samples-from-archeological-site-near-quinhagak-unlock-genetic-mysteries/

Ancient Forest Thaws From Melting Glacial Tomb

An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.

Stumps and logs have been popping out from under southern Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier — a 36.8-square-mile (95.3 square kilometers) river of ice flowing into a lake near Juneau — for nearly the past 50 years. However, just within the past year or so, researchers based at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau have noticed considerably more trees popping up, many in their original upright position and some still bearing roots and even a bit of bark, the Juneau Empire first reported last week.

"There are a lot of them, and being in a growth position is exciting because we can see the outermost part of the tree and count back to see how old the tree was," Cathy Connor, a geology professor at the University of Alaska Southeast who was involved in the investigation, told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. "Mostly, people find chunks of wood helter-skelter, but to see these intact upright is kind of cool."

The team has tentatively identified the trees as either spruce or hemlock, based on the diameter of the trunks and because these are the types of trees growing in the region today, Connor said, but the researchers still need to further assess the samples to verify the tree type.

A protective tomb of gravel likely encased the trees more than 1,000 years ago, when the glacier was advancing, Connor said, basing the date on radiocarbon ages of the newly revealed wood. As glaciers advance, Connor explained, they often emit summer meltwater streams that spew aprons of gravel beyond the glacier's edge.

A gravel layer about 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 meters) high appears to have encased the trees before the glacier ultimately advanced enough to plow over them, snapping off limbs and preserving the stumps in an ice tomb.

Taku Glacier, located south of Juneau, is currently triggering this same process as it advances over a modern forest of cottonwood trees, offering the researchers a chance to observe the process in real time, Connor said.

Unlike the growing Taku Glacier, which accumulates snow at a high elevation and thus is well situated to grow, the lower-elevation Mendenhall Glacier has retreated by an average rate of about 170 feet (52 m) per year since 2005. This year's summer retreat has not yet been calculated, but the team expects it to be relatively high due to unusually warm summer temperatures, Connor said.

Glacial retreat worries many locals who are concerned about the threat of rising sea levels and loss of major freshwater sources that they rely on for drinking water. Anchorage, the state's most populated city, relies entirely on the retreating Eklutna Glacier for its drinking water.

Still, glacial retreat does offer an interesting opportunity to investigate well-preserved remnants of an ancient world. The team plans to return to the Mendenhall Glacier to dig through sediment in search of pine needles associated with the trees, along with other vegetation. They also plan to measure the growth bands of the trees to determine how old the trees were when they died.

"These are relict stories, and piecing them together with radiocarbon dating and stratigraphic work would help piece together the chapters of the story," Connor said.

The researchers have not yet published the results from the investigation but plan to do so once they have gathered more data.
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References:

Poppick, Laura. 2013. “Ancient Forest Thaws From Melting Glacial Tomb”. Live Science. Posted: September 20, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html

Alaskan Archaeologists Find Ancient Artefacts

A team from the University of Alaska Museum of the North expected to find more boulders etched with petroglyphs during an expedition to further explore the remains of three prehistoric lake-front dwellings in Northwest Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve this summer.

However, when archaeologist Scott Shirar and members of his team began small-scale excavations at two of the sites, they made a fascinating new discovery: four decorated clay disks that appear to be the first of their kind found in Alaska.

“The first one looks like a little stone that had some scratch marks on it,” said Shirar, a research archaeologist at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. “We got really excited when we found the second one with the drilled hole and the more complicated etchings on it. That’s when we realised we had something unique.”

After discussion with colleagues and searching for references in the archaeological record, Shirar came to the conclusion that the disks appear to be a new artefact type for Alaska. He added, “We only opened up a really small amount of ground at the site, so the fact that we found four of these artefacts indicates there are probably more and that something really significant is happening.”

While prehistoric rock art is common in some regions, such as the American Southwest, it is exceptionally rare in Interior and Northern Alaska. Archaeologists working in the 1960s and 70s found the boulders at three different lake-front sites in what is now the Noatak National Preserve.

The rock art remained on location, undocumented for almost 40 years until this summer, when a team from the UA Museum of the North and the National Park Service assembled to create a permanent record at two of the sites.

Mareca Guthrie, fine arts collection manager at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, joined the expedition to make sketches and take tracings of the boulders. At first, she was just excited for an opportunity to get out of the basement of the museum for a week, but she quickly developed an appreciation for the people who had lived there.

It felt so intimate to be looking through someone else’s things, knowing that they sat in the same spot and saw the same view of the mountains. When I started getting tired of the mixed nuts I brought for lunch, I thought, ‘Did the kids complain when they ate caribou day after day or were they thankful to have it?’” she said. “I became so hungry to know more about them, I’m afraid I may have driven the archaeologists a little crazy with my questions.”

The team visited the site to both document the rock art and also excavate subterranean house pits to locate samples that could be used for radiocarbon dating, such as animal bones, charcoal or other organic matter in order to get a better idea of when people lived there.

Archaeologists use the term rock art to describe any human-made marks on natural stone. Petroglyphs are pictures created by picking, carving or abrading the surface of a rock.

Shirar said the precise meaning of these petroglyphs, as well as the designs on the clay disks, is still unknown, but their value is clear.

“These objects and places clearly had special significance to their makers. These finds offer an especially tangible reminder of the rich spiritual and intellectual lives they led.”
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References:

Past Horizons. 2011. "Alaskan Archaeologists Find Ancient Artefacts". Past Horizons. Posted: September , 2011. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/09/2011/alaskan-archaeologists-find-ancient-artefacts

Discovery of Oldest Northern North American Human Remains Provides New Insights Into Ice-Age Culture

Scientists have discovered the cremated skeleton of a Paleoindian child in the remains of an 11,500-year-old house in central Alaska. The findings reveal a slice of domestic life that has been missing from the record of the region's early people, who were among the first to colonize the Americas.

The discovery, by Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and colleagues, appears in the 25 February issue of the journal Science.

"The site is truly spectacular in all senses of the word," Potter said. "The cremation is quite significant, but the context of the find is important too."

In contrast to the temporary hunting camps and other specialized work sites that have produced much of the evidence of North America's early habitation, the newly discovered house appears to have been a seasonal home, used during the summer. Its inhabitants, who included women and children, foraged for fish, birds and small mammals nearby, according to Potter's team.

"Before this find we knew people were hunting large game like bison or elk with sophisticated weapons, but most of sites we had to study were hunting camps. But here we know there were young children and females. So, this is a whole piece of the settlement system that we had virtually no record of," he said.

"As part of the Beringian Land Bridge, Alaska was an important crossroads for the Old and the New Worlds. This study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the early inhabitants of Beringia and their culture," said Brooks Hanson, Deputy Editor, Physical Sciences, at Science.

The young child probably died -- it's not clear how -- before being cremated in a large pit in the center of the home. This pit had many purposes, including cooking and waste disposal. After the cremation, the pit was sealed up and the house was abandoned, the researchers report.

The name of the site where this discovery took place, "Upper Sun River," is a translation of a nearby Athabaskan placename, Xaasaa Na'. The site lies within a dune field in the boreal forest of the Tanana lowlands. The child has been named Xaasaa Cheege Ts'eniin (or Upward Sun River Mouth Child) by the local Native community, the Healy Lake Tribe.

The house's floor was dug about 27 centimeters below the original ground surface. Colored stains in the sediment suggest that poles may have been used to support the walls or roof, though it's not clear what the latter would have been made of. The entire house has not yet been fully excavated, so its total size is still unknown.

The pit at the center was oval-shaped and about 45 centimeters deep. In sediment layers beneath the skeleton, the researchers found bones of salmon, ground squirrels, ptarmigan and other small animals. The skeleton was a particular surprise, since no human remains older than a few hundred years have ever been found in Subarctic Alaska.

Only about 20 percent of the burned skeleton was preserved. The remains don't reveal the child's sex, but they do include teeth, which allowed the researchers to conclude the child was around three years old. The remains showed no signs of injury or illness, though that isn't surprising, since most health problems don't leave traces in bones.

Potter's team didn't find any objects that were clearly grave goods. The researchers did excavate two pieces of red ochre along with the skeleton, but their significance is unclear. While red ochre has been part of burials around the world, it also has many other uses.

This lack of symbolic objects is typical for a mobile hunter-gatherer society like the one at Upper Sun River, according to Potter. It should not be interpreted as a sign that the child's death was treated casually, Potter said.

"All the evidence indicates that they went through some effort. The burial was within the house. If you think of the house as the center of many residential activities: cooking, eating, sleeping, and the fact that they abandoned the house soon afterward the cremation, this is pretty compelling evidence of the careful treatment of the child," Potter said.

While the findings certainly provoke questions about the story of this particular death, for Potter and other archeologists, the site is perhaps even more valuable for what it says broadly about the lifestyles of the early people who lived in the region.

Although many of the specifics are still under debate, researchers generally believe that the first people in North America came across the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia some time near the end of the last ice age, around 13,000 years ago or earlier. Archaeological evidence from this time period is scanty, however, especially in the northern regions adjacent to the Bering Sea, known as Beringia.

Scientists have discovered only a handful of known houses in North America from the continent's first 2,000 years of human occupation. And, except for the one at Upper Sun River, those houses are in the lower 48 states or at Ushki Lake in Siberia. Ushki Lake also includes the only known burial site from this time period in Beringia.

The stone tools from contemporaneous sites in central Alaska fit into a category known as microblade technology, which consists of small, stone, razor-blade-like pieces set into larger organic points. In contrast, the more well-known Clovis people of central North America did not make microblades. In fact, the stone artifacts, along with the house structure and the types of animal remains found at Upper Sun River appear more similar to those of Siberia's Ushki Lake than to anything from the lower 48 states.

"We've got this basic technological organization system that links Alaska with the Old World," Potter said.

Researchers have debated over whether the people in central Alaska during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene were all part of one larger cultural group or whether they belonged to different groups. The tools and other remains at Upper Sun River, and their similarities to some others in the region, support the former scenario, Potter and his colleagues say.

Differences exist among the sites, but these may reflect this people's versatility, with different members carrying out different tasks, such as hunting large game or foraging for small mammals and birds, during different times of year, the researchers argue.

Throughout the excavation, Potter's groups worked closely with leaders of the Healy Lake Tribe and other native groups that live near the Upper Sun River site.

"Our consultation with the local Native groups is not only an ethical imperative in archaeology today, it has been a fulfilling and productive partnership, from my perspective," said Potter.

"We strove to be diligent with full and open negotiations from the time of discovery and before, and we have worked together to build a foundation for continued work on this find and for future discoveries."
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References:

Science Daily. 2011. "Discovery of Oldest Northern North American Human Remains Provides New Insights Into Ice-Age Culture". Science Daily. Posted: February 24, 2011. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110224145551.htm

Journal Reference:

B. A. Potter, J. D. Irish, J. D. Reuther, C. Gelvin-Reymiller, V. T. Holliday. A Terminal Pleistocene Child Cremation and Residential Structure from Eastern Beringia. Science, 2011; 331 (6020): 1058 DOI: 10.1126/science.1201581

Southwest Alaska dig gives scientists rare window into Yup'ik culture

What's being called the first large-scale excavation in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has yielded a treasure trove of ancient Eskimo objects, and sparked a race against global warming along the eroding Bering Sea coast.

"In the time I'm giving this talk hundreds of artifacts are washing out to sea all over the delta region," said Rick Knecht, a longtime Alaska archaeologist now employed by the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

At the 700-year-old site near the village of Quinhagak -- called Nunalleq or Yup'ik for "old village site" -- workers have discovered dozens of sod homes just under the tundra.

They've recovered thousands of objects that had long been locked in ice. The list includes "miraculously preserved" bentwood bowls, knives with handles, whole clay pots, and carved figures, or "dolls," some with expressive faces caught in a smile or frown.

Sometimes, they pulled items from puddles of melted permafrost.

"It was melting as fast as we dug," Knecht said.

The items are placed in a waxy chemical immediately to protect them because they can crumble in minutes if they dry out.

The find includes what my have been a men's house, or qasgiq, a school where boys learned survival skills from men. Wood shavings lined the floor, perhaps dropped from carving lessons, a common guy activity.

"Boy toys" littered the large house -- model kayaks of wood, slate arrow blades still attached to shafts, harpoon points.

The women's tools, such as moon-shaped ulu knives for cutting through fish and bone-needles for sewing, were found elsewhere.

The excavators, including villagers and college students who raised money to make the trip, feel like they're up against global warming.

With the sea melting the coast and protective ice from artifacts, Quinhagak's village corporation, Qanirtuuq, with help from the Alaska Marine Grant Sea Advisory Program, called on Knecht for help. Kanektok River Adventures, a subsidiary of the corporation, also supported the project.

Knecht, known for helping build Native museums in Kodiak and Unalaska, said he and others found the buried village by beachcombing for prehistoric artifacts in 2009 and following the trail of objects.

That was the first day. Amazing discoveries came quickly, he said.

The site, two miles south of Quinhagak and 450 miles west of Anchorage, isn't the only one in danger of vanishing from the delta.

"These layers in the ground that are pages in your history book are being torn out by this sea level rise," Knecht told a room of villagers from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. More than 200 villagers gathered this week for the annual convention of the Association of Village Council Presidents, which provides social services in the region.

The vast delta, with more than 50 communities scattered along the sea and rivers, is one of the world's largest areas unexplored by archaeologists, he said.

The Yup'ik artifacts known to man were collected recently, within 150 years, often by explorers gathering items for museum archives, Knecht said.

Nunalleq is already providing clues into Yup'ik pre-history and the broader Eskimo culture that includes Aleuts and Inupiat, such as where they originated. More will be discovered.

"We need to know how deeply rooted this culture is," Knecht said.

An analysis of hair strands -- apparently the remains of haircuts in the possible men's house -- showed that people ate caribou and salmon year-round.

"They had a steady supply, from drying and storing," he said.

Leadership in the village of Quinhagak agreed today to let Knecht do DNA analyses of the hair, which might tell if the piles of locks came only from males. If so, it could be a good sampling of the village's male population.

Teams of diggers also found many big animal shoulder bones that may have been used as snow shovels. Woven reed mats were found in house walls, helping keep out the sod. What Knect called "wooden tally sticks" probably kept scores in games.

One treasure included a small ivory carving of a head that may have been lashed to a kayak or some other object, judging from a series of holes in the back. The face contains a smaller face below it, the inua or yua, the Eskimo motif representing the spirit of all things, Knecht said.

There were signs the residents had contact with other cultures, including polished coal beads that may have followed trade routes from the Gulf of Alaska, and calcite lip plugs, or labrets, found in the Aleutian Chain.

The items are being analyzed at labs in Scotland, but they belong to the Yup'ik people, he said. They will return to Quinhagak, a village of 700.

AVCP hopes to build a repository and a museum to store artifacts in Bethel, said Myron Naneng, president.

The repository will give young people the chance to see the richness of their culture.

"By having a repository, you'll be in control of your own cultural heritage. That's a basic human right that you need to have," Knecht said.

Other villages aware of sites that may be disappearing should contact Knecht or Steve Street, AVCP archaeologist, at (907) 543-7355. Knecht's email address is r DOT knecht AT abdn DOT ac DOT uk.

The archaeologists are working on a plan to "triage the sites," Knecht said. That includes training villagers as local archaeologists.
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References:

DeMarban, Alex. 2010. "Southwest Alaska dig gives scientists rare window into Yup'ik culture". The Tundra Drums. Posted: October 7, 2010. Available online: http://www.thetundradrums.com/article/1040southwest_alaska_dig_gives_scientists_rare

Alex DeMarban can be reached at alex AT alaskanewspapers DOT com.