DNA reveals history of vanished 'Paleo-Eskimos' (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jonathan Webb
Science reporter, BBC News

A new "genetic prehistory" provides the best picture ever assembled of how the North American Arctic was populated, from 6,000 years ago to the present.

DNA sequences from living and ancient inhabitants show a single influx from Siberia produced all the "Paleo-Eskimo" cultures, which died out 700 years ago.

Modern-day Inuit and Native Americans arose from separate migrations.

Previously our understanding of this history was based largely on cultural artefacts, dug up by archaeologists.

The study, which has more than 50 authors hailing from institutions across the globe, was published in the journal Science.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28965227

[Igel]

1. A lot of people won't like that.

Not at all. They sort of object to "indigenous" peoples having moved into an area only 600-800 years ago, esp. if there's even the suggestion of that horrible moral taint of genocide. Then you have to come up with an argument why "700 years' residence" = indigenous but "300 years' residence" = obvious invader and occupier. Is the magic length of time 400 years? 500? 699? Hard to justify irredentism at that point.


Still, I've wondered for years about why the Norse settlements in the north didn't result in the same consequences as contact with the Spanish had in the south.

In the south, very quickly smallpox spread from European to "American", and then took off in all directions. This ravaged the local populations; it's difficult to see how cultures weren't radically reformed, even in pre-industrial cultures without extreme specialization. You wipe out 80-90% of an American city at random, you don't just form a similar kind of town with all the same specializations and properties. The intervening chaos reshapes things.

Didn't the Norse have novel diseases? Shouldn't those have spread?

But if they had spread, wouldn't that have led to some resistance to those diseases when the Spanish showed up, at least among some communities?

[cstanleytech]

2. I'm leaning towards ship design differences and the different routes they both used.

The northern route could only be used at certain times of the year after all due to the ice in winter where as the more southern route was pretty much free of said ice.