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First Americans - Native American history - page 1 of 2

Although the debate is ongoing, at present the archaeological record of northeastern Siberia, western Beringia, indicates no human presence there prior to 15,000 years ago and the record in Alaska suggests that humans did not cross the Land Bridge and enter North America much before 12,000 years ago. However, what happened after these earliest immigrants reached eastern Beringia, Alaska, is the subject of even greater debate. Did these ancient humans enter the Western Hemisphere through Alaska moving southeastward into the interior; or did they arrive by more exotic routes, perhaps by sea along Alaska's southern coast, or possibly across the open Pacific Ocean even further south? Answers to such questions about the earliest Americans and their travel routes probably await chance discoveries in the future. In the meantime, there are several other intriguing pieces to the puzzle surrounding early humans in Alaska that are being addressed through an interdisciplinary project led by the Bureau of Land Management in collaboration with researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Columbia University, and NASA. The research is being conducted in northern Alaska, primarily within the 23 million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and involves archaeology, geology, paleoecology, paleobotany, and paleoclimatology.

The earliest, securely dated locales of human activity in Alaska come from the interval between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the final two millennia of the Pleistocene. These earliest Alaskan populations are represented by a number of archaeological sites in the Tanana and Nenana valleys in interior Alaska, and at several sites along the north flank of the Brooks Range in Arctic Alaska. The surprising thing is that these ancient people are represented by at least two and possibly three distinctly different stone-tool assemblages or lithic industries. In the archaeological record, technological diversity that occurs contemporaneously within a region is usually believed to mirror cultural diversity and these three lithic industries, Nenana, Denali, and Mesa, may represent three culturally distinct groups of ancient hunters and foragers. While the technological difference between Denali and Nenana is somewhat subtle, the difference between them and Mesa is marked. This is surprising because logically these first Americans would all be expected to be part of the same general migration episode, comprising one cultural group, and, therefore, utilizing the same lithic technology. It is interesting that the archaeological record of northeastern Siberia, western Beringia, does not indicate that the technological and cultural diversity of late Pleistocene eastern Beringia occurred. Since the technological and cultural diversity of eastern Beringia does not appear to stem from western Beringia it may well have evolved in the North American Arctic, possibly in response to more regional stimuli such as climate and environment, or containment resulting from the vast continental glaciers to the south.

The climate at the end of the last Ice-Age was more variable than at any time in the following 10,000 years. A variety of evidence indicates that between 12,000 and 9000 years ago, intervals of mild climate were followed by the sudden return of full glacial conditions in the space of only a few years. Such repeated radical swings in climate, especially those associated with the climatically chaotic Younger Dryas event, could have disrupted established ecosystems. Therefore, the technological and cultural diversity among the human inhabitants of eastern Beringia during this time may be the result of humans trying to cope with unstable environmental conditions. It is possible that at the time of the first migrations, Alaska was still isolated from the rest of North America by continental glaciers. Because of this, Alaska may have acted as a holding pen, causing disparate groups to intermingle, initiating the evolution of the original New World cultures.

• Athabascans,
• Yup'ik and Cup'ik,
• Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik people,
• Aleut and Alutiiq peoples,
• Eyak, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people.

Native American history - read more page 2

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