Origins of Paleoindians
Encyclopedia
Paleoindians
refers to the ancestral peoples of modern Indigenous peoples of the Americas
. They are thought to have populated North America
and South America
around the end of the last ice age
. Their exact origins and the route and timing of their migrations are the subject of much discussion.
The Last Glacial Maximum
(LGM) of the Wurm/Wisconsin glacial period
occurred approximately 20,000-18,000 years ago. Extremely cold weather resulted in the formation of vast ice sheets across the Earth's northernmost and southernmost latitudes. Glaciers also formed south of the 30th parallel in the Andean Mountains along the western coast of South America
. As the ice sheets formed, sea levels dropped worldwide. When the Bering
and Chukchi Seas had dropped some 400 feet lower than their present level, land beneath the Bering Strait
was exposed. This is referred to as Beringia
, an ancient Ice Age
subcontinent that united the eastern and western hemispheres [1 140; 2 60].
The Bering land bridge
was a treeless, grassy tundra
over 1000 miles wide. Broad temperature fluctuations produced below-freezing nighttime conditions. Permafrost
kept the soil frozen year round except in the summer, when the first few inches of topsoil became waterlogged and spongy.
Several groups from Asia migrated across Beringia to enter and populate North America. The standard model includes Eurasian big-game hunters travelling across Siberia to Beringia. Other models include Southeast Asians using watercraft to skip along the Pacific Rim
, arriving in the Americas via a coastal route.
After 18,000 years ago, the world began to warm up and the ice sheets began to melt, causing sea levels to rise. Massive flooding occurred from 15,000 to 13,000 years ago, when ice dams high in the mountains were breached. By 14,000 years ago, the land bridge lay submerged beneath the Bering Strait [3 199, 206; 4 1; 5].
The Wisconsin ice sheet that covered Canada was almost 2 miles thick and blocked any movement through the interior by Paleo-Arctic dwellers. By 12,000, it had broken up into two smaller ice sheets—the Cordilleran and the Laurentide. This formed the McKenzie corridor--an ice-free passage from Alaska to the Montana-North Dakota border. Paleo-Arctic populations that remained on the Arctic coast were generally more adept at hunting sea mammals and fishing than those who pursued caribou, mammoths, and other terrestrial mammals into the interior once the McKenzie corridor opened [2 60, 62; 3 206].
Paleoindians travelled light and moved frequently—they were always moving to find new sources of plant foods and wild game. They did not carry much food and their tool kit of microblades was easily transported. Their diet was often sustaining and rich in protein due to successful hunting.
A highly mobile people such as the Paleoindians, probably had a surprisingly high reproductive rate. Travelling light during frequent moves was a more efficient utilization of calories than hunting and foraging further and further away from more permanent encampments. Paleoindians could carry more and provide for more children on the move than if they had built permanent settlements. In the bottleneck of Middle America
, their birth rate decreased when "new" hunting grounds were found already populated by other bands. This slowed their progress and allowed the higher costs of more permanent residence to accumulate [10 501-504].
The Paleoindians may have moved every 3–4 days and covered 150 to 200 miles a year [10 501-502]. A thin population of humans spread over both Americas by 11,000 when the Clovis culture appeared in the Southwest. Paleoindians are generally associated with Clovis spearpoints that were hafted to darts and hurled from atlatls at the last mammoths on earth. Clovis culture was gone in 300 years but the stage had been set for the appearance of the earliest American Archaic Indians [3 205, 210].
The Paleo-Arctic tradition diffused into North America no later than 14,000 when early inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands began to exploit the coast for fish and sea mammals. Paleo-Arctic (or Stage 1) sites include Anangula
(>7,000) on Umnak Island in the Aleutian islands chain, Onion Portage (15,000), and Old Crow Flats (29,000) in the Yukon just east of the Alaskan border [6 34, 45-46].
The Asian Paleo-Arctic tradition would eventually give rise to the modern maritime hunting and gathering cultures of the Koryak, Tungas, Chukchee, and Siberian Inuit
. The American Paleo-Arctic tradition appears to have included at least two groups—the Aleuts and Inuit of the Arctic and the ancestors of Paleoindians.
The Paleolithic ended by 10,000 and, in the New World, was followed by the Middle Lithic. By the end of the Middle Lithic in 7,000, small isolated settlements had appeared on the Aleutian Islands, the Alaskan Peninsula, and on both sides of the Seward Peninsula. After 4,500, continued melting of the polar ice cap opened the Arctic waters and permitted widespread settlement along the Arctic
ring from Alaska to Greenland
. This culture of Arctic dwellers would eventually become the Aleuts and Inuit—modern hunters and fishers of the Arctic [6 43-44, 46].
The gene pool of Paleoindians (and today's Native Americans) may have also received contributions from ancestors of the present-day Ainu
. The Ainu are an ancient culture of hunters, gatherers, and farmers who still live on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō
and the Kurile Islands in the archipelago north of Japan. A small population of Ainu still survive. They possess features of both Japanese and the European Caucasoid: light complexions, wavy hair, and sturdy bodies [7 54].
In addition to the Ainu, other present-day hunter-gatherer societies that have remained isolated in northeast Asia and North America and whose ancestors may have contributed to the gene pool of Paleoindian are the Yukaghir
, Inuit, Aleut, Koniag, Kamchadal, Chukchi, and Koryak
. However, in one anthropological study, only three groups of Gm allotypes (i.e. special blood proteins) were found in Native Americans. One group is supposedly that of the Paleoindians (which also includes thousands of Central and South American Indians) and the second is that of the Inuit and Aleuts. Another study involving mitochondrial DNA suggests a single founding tribe diverged into 4 specific mtDNA lineages responsible for 95% of all Amerindian genotypes. These 4 lineages may have roots in present-day Siberian, Mongolian
, and Tibetan populations. A fifth lineage known as Haplogroup X (mtDNA)
has been associated with European or Eurasian
populations [3 204; 11 226-227; 10 56-58].
The most telling physical evidence for the ancestry of the first Americans is a unique
"shovelling" of the two central upper incisors. The posterior surface of the teeth is hollowed like a shovel and referred to as sinodonty. Sinodonty is common amongst populations of Native Americans in North, Central, and South America; and in Turkestan
(from the Caspian Sea to the Gobi Desert), Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Siberia. A population of Sami
from Finland
are also classified as sinodonts.
Opposed to sinodonty, sundadonty is found from Africa to Central Asia
and Scandinavia
. Most, but not all prehistoric North and South American human remains display a common Asian ancestry, including the skulls found in Minnesota which are dated to about 8,500 years. The well-known Kennewick Man
remains are thought to exhibit sundadonty. [3 196-198, 233, 236; 7 53, 55].
Paleo Indians
Paleo-Indians or Paleoamericans is a classification term given to the first peoples who entered, and subsequently inhabited, the American continent during the final glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period...
refers to the ancestral peoples of modern Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. They are thought to have populated North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
around the end of the last ice age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
. Their exact origins and the route and timing of their migrations are the subject of much discussion.
The Land Bridge
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum refers to a period in the Earth's climate history when ice sheets were at their maximum extension, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, marking the peak of the last glacial period. During this time, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe and...
(LGM) of the Wurm/Wisconsin glacial period
Wisconsin glaciation
The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age occurring during the last years of the Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago....
occurred approximately 20,000-18,000 years ago. Extremely cold weather resulted in the formation of vast ice sheets across the Earth's northernmost and southernmost latitudes. Glaciers also formed south of the 30th parallel in the Andean Mountains along the western coast of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. As the ice sheets formed, sea levels dropped worldwide. When the Bering
Bering Sea
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves....
and Chukchi Seas had dropped some 400 feet lower than their present level, land beneath the Bering Strait
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...
was exposed. This is referred to as Beringia
Bering land bridge
The Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles wide at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Like most of Siberia and all of Manchuria, Beringia was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light...
, an ancient Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
subcontinent that united the eastern and western hemispheres [1 140; 2 60].
The Bering land bridge
Bering land bridge
The Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles wide at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Like most of Siberia and all of Manchuria, Beringia was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light...
was a treeless, grassy tundra
Tundra
In physical geography, tundra is a biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sami word tūndâr "uplands," "treeless mountain tract." There are three types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine...
over 1000 miles wide. Broad temperature fluctuations produced below-freezing nighttime conditions. Permafrost
Permafrost
In geology, permafrost, cryotic soil or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of...
kept the soil frozen year round except in the summer, when the first few inches of topsoil became waterlogged and spongy.
Several groups from Asia migrated across Beringia to enter and populate North America. The standard model includes Eurasian big-game hunters travelling across Siberia to Beringia. Other models include Southeast Asians using watercraft to skip along the Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim
The Pacific Rim refers to places around the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The term "Pacific Basin" includes the Pacific Rim and islands in the Pacific Ocean...
, arriving in the Americas via a coastal route.
After 18,000 years ago, the world began to warm up and the ice sheets began to melt, causing sea levels to rise. Massive flooding occurred from 15,000 to 13,000 years ago, when ice dams high in the mountains were breached. By 14,000 years ago, the land bridge lay submerged beneath the Bering Strait [3 199, 206; 4 1; 5].
The Paleoindians
- "Paleoindians are thought to have lived primarily as small, mobile groups of big game hunters." [9 129]
Paleoindians travelled light and moved frequently—they were always moving to find new sources of plant foods and wild game. They did not carry much food and their tool kit of microblades was easily transported. Their diet was often sustaining and rich in protein due to successful hunting.
A highly mobile people such as the Paleoindians, probably had a surprisingly high reproductive rate. Travelling light during frequent moves was a more efficient utilization of calories than hunting and foraging further and further away from more permanent encampments. Paleoindians could carry more and provide for more children on the move than if they had built permanent settlements. In the bottleneck of Middle America
Middle America (Americas)
Middle America is a region in the mid-latitudes of the Americas. In southern North America, it usually comprises Mexico, the nations of Central America, and the West Indies. The scope of the term may vary...
, their birth rate decreased when "new" hunting grounds were found already populated by other bands. This slowed their progress and allowed the higher costs of more permanent residence to accumulate [10 501-504].
The Paleoindians may have moved every 3–4 days and covered 150 to 200 miles a year [10 501-502]. A thin population of humans spread over both Americas by 11,000 when the Clovis culture appeared in the Southwest. Paleoindians are generally associated with Clovis spearpoints that were hafted to darts and hurled from atlatls at the last mammoths on earth. Clovis culture was gone in 300 years but the stage had been set for the appearance of the earliest American Archaic Indians [3 205, 210].
The Paleo-Arctic
The manufacture of microliths and composite tools from 27,000-7,000 is known as the Northeast Asian-Northwest American Microblade Tradition (NAMANT) or the Paleo-Arctic tradition. This was the first stage in colonization of the Arctic and included both continents. The Paleo-Arctic tradition contained elements from both southeast Asian boat-building and northeast Asian microblade technologies.The Paleo-Arctic tradition diffused into North America no later than 14,000 when early inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands began to exploit the coast for fish and sea mammals. Paleo-Arctic (or Stage 1) sites include Anangula
Anangula Archeological District
The Anangula Site or Anangula Archeological District is an archaeological site in Alaska. Located on a long island in the Aleutian Islands off the western coast of Umnak Island, it lies north-northwest of Nikolski Bay. The Anangula site was first recognized by a man with the last name of...
(>7,000) on Umnak Island in the Aleutian islands chain, Onion Portage (15,000), and Old Crow Flats (29,000) in the Yukon just east of the Alaskan border [6 34, 45-46].
The Asian Paleo-Arctic tradition would eventually give rise to the modern maritime hunting and gathering cultures of the Koryak, Tungas, Chukchee, and Siberian Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
. The American Paleo-Arctic tradition appears to have included at least two groups—the Aleuts and Inuit of the Arctic and the ancestors of Paleoindians.
The Aleuts and Inuit
One group adapted to the rich resources that could be harvested from the sea. These Upper Stone Age hunters set microblades into grooves on bone points, hafted them onto various types of shafts, and used them to hunt seals, whales, and caribou [3 195-196; 6 34, 45-46]. They were probably the first people on earth to build watercraft by covering wooden frames with sealskins.The Paleolithic ended by 10,000 and, in the New World, was followed by the Middle Lithic. By the end of the Middle Lithic in 7,000, small isolated settlements had appeared on the Aleutian Islands, the Alaskan Peninsula, and on both sides of the Seward Peninsula. After 4,500, continued melting of the polar ice cap opened the Arctic waters and permitted widespread settlement along the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
ring from Alaska to Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
. This culture of Arctic dwellers would eventually become the Aleuts and Inuit—modern hunters and fishers of the Arctic [6 43-44, 46].
Paleoindian Genes
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
. The Ainu are an ancient culture of hunters, gatherers, and farmers who still live on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō
Hokkaido
, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island; it is also the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, although the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel...
and the Kurile Islands in the archipelago north of Japan. A small population of Ainu still survive. They possess features of both Japanese and the European Caucasoid: light complexions, wavy hair, and sturdy bodies [7 54].
In addition to the Ainu, other present-day hunter-gatherer societies that have remained isolated in northeast Asia and North America and whose ancestors may have contributed to the gene pool of Paleoindian are the Yukaghir
Yukaghir
The Yukaghir, or Yukagirs , деткиль ) are a people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River.-Region:The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic; the Taiga Yukaghirs in the Upper Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic and in Srednekansky District of...
, Inuit, Aleut, Koniag, Kamchadal, Chukchi, and Koryak
Koryak
Koryak may refer to:*Koryak Autonomous Okrug, a federal subject of Russia*Koryaks, a people of northeastern Siberia*Koryak language, language of the Koryaks*Koryak, the illegitimate son of Aquaman, a fictional character in DC Comics...
. However, in one anthropological study, only three groups of Gm allotypes (i.e. special blood proteins) were found in Native Americans. One group is supposedly that of the Paleoindians (which also includes thousands of Central and South American Indians) and the second is that of the Inuit and Aleuts. Another study involving mitochondrial DNA suggests a single founding tribe diverged into 4 specific mtDNA lineages responsible for 95% of all Amerindian genotypes. These 4 lineages may have roots in present-day Siberian, Mongolian
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
, and Tibetan populations. A fifth lineage known as Haplogroup X (mtDNA)
Haplogroup X (mtDNA)
In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup X is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. It has a widespread global distribution but no major regions of distinct localization.-Origin:...
has been associated with European or Eurasian
Eurasian nomads
Eurasian nomads are a large group of peoples of the Eurasian Steppe. This generic title encompasses the ethnic groups inhabiting the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. They domesticated the horse, and their economy and culture emphasizes horse breeding, horse riding, and a...
populations [3 204; 11 226-227; 10 56-58].
The most telling physical evidence for the ancestry of the first Americans is a unique
"shovelling" of the two central upper incisors. The posterior surface of the teeth is hollowed like a shovel and referred to as sinodonty. Sinodonty is common amongst populations of Native Americans in North, Central, and South America; and in Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
(from the Caspian Sea to the Gobi Desert), Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Siberia. A population of Sami
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...
from Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
are also classified as sinodonts.
Opposed to sinodonty, sundadonty is found from Africa to Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
and Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
. Most, but not all prehistoric North and South American human remains display a common Asian ancestry, including the skulls found in Minnesota which are dated to about 8,500 years. The well-known Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man is the name for the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, USA, on July 28, 1996...
remains are thought to exhibit sundadonty. [3 196-198, 233, 236; 7 53, 55].
See also
- Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contactPre-Columbian trans-oceanic contactTheories of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact are those theories that propose interaction between indigenous peoples of the Americas who settled the Americas before 10,000 BC, and peoples of other continents , which occurred before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492.Many...
- Lithic stage in Canada (18000 BCE - 8000 BCE)
- Haplogroup X (mtDNA)Haplogroup X (mtDNA)In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup X is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. It has a widespread global distribution but no major regions of distinct localization.-Origin:...
- Kennewick ManKennewick ManKennewick Man is the name for the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, USA, on July 28, 1996...
- Solutrean hypothesisSolutrean hypothesisThe Solutrean hypothesis proposes that peoples from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers in the Americas, as evidenced by similarities in stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture from prehistoric Europe to that of the later Clovis tool-making culture found in the Americas. It was...