As humans spread out of Africa and settled the rest of the world tens of thousands of years ago, one geographic location was the last frontier that people conquered: the North American Arctic. The origins of the first people in the Arctic are somewhat mysterious, and one research team, spurred by the native Elders of Barrow, set out to learn whether today’s Arctic inhabitants are descended from those earliest settlers.
Arctic Origins
About 4,500 years ago, a group of people that archaeologists call Paleo-Eskimos were living in stark, frigid Beringia. They were trackers, hunting game animals like caribou and seals, and leaving traces of small settlements all along the north coast of North America. But around 1,400 years ago, archaeologists find new and different artifacts – dogsleds, large whale bone houses, and umiaqs (a type of boat). A new archaeological culture appeared in the Bering Sea region and spread their whale-hunting culture throughout the rest of the Arctic in just a few short generations. It was this new culture, sometimes called Neo-Eskimo or Thule, that was met by European explorers a few centuries later and that continues into the present as Inuit (Canada and Greenland), Eskimo (Siberia), and Iñupiat (Alaska).
Umiaq Sled (Photo credit: J. Raff)
Archaeologists and biological anthropologists have been puzzled by the sudden origins and rapid spread of the Neo-Eskimos, whose arrival in the Americans apparently signaled the demise of the Paleo-Eskimos. Was this rapid spread of the new whaling culture accompanied by the rapid spread of a new population? Were the new cultural artifacts better for survival, spreading to other populations already living in the Arctic? Did the Neo-Eskimos out-compete the Paleo-Eskimos, or did the two groups mesh and give rise to modern Arctic inhabitants? Is the Alaskan North Slope the original homeland of both the Paleo-Eskimos and the Neo-Eskimos in Canada and Greenland? A team of researchers used genetics and archaeology to find the answer.
Iñupiat Community Involvement
The roots of this project lay in an eroding burial at Nuvuk. Located at the very tip of Point Barrow near the modern village of Barrow, Alaska, Nuvuk was thought to be a village from the mid-1800s, but a burial with Thule artifacts meant the site was much older. Anne Jensen, an archaeologist with the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation, was called in to recover the burial. A similar burial was found the following year, so Jensen consulted with the local and tribal governments - Barrow Senior Advisory Council, the Native Village of Barrow, and the Iñupiat History, Language and Culture Commission - about how to handle the ancient burials. The Elders in particular felt that the ancient burials at Nuvuk should be found and moved to a safer location. "They were enthusiastic about having as much information recorded about the individuals as possible," Jensen says, "but did not want the human remains to leave Barrow. They had too much experience with part of their heritage being taken out of town and never returned."
Although Jensen secured funding for the excavation, it was more difficult for her to find biological anthropologists who were willing to travel to Nuvuk to work on the skeletons. University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O'Rourke was willing to try, and he came to Barrow to ask formal permission from the community for his analysis. The Elders were enthusiastic about DNA studies on the ancient Thule skeletons, but they wanted to go a step further. They proposed a study of modern genetics from people across the North Slope of Alaska, as they were certain that a large-scale genetic study would shed light on the origins of modern Arctic groups and the relationships among them. O'Rourke led the genetic investigations of the prehistoric Nuvuk population and recruited Geoff Hayes, an anthropological geneticist at Northwestern University, and Jennifer Raff, also an anthropological geneticist working at the time in Hayes' lab, to undertake study of the contemporary North Slope population.
Dr. Jennifer Raff working at the site of Nuvuk, Alaska, in 2009 (Photo credit: J. Raff)
DNA of the Alaskan North Slope
Hayes and Raff collected and sequenced the DNA of 181 natives of the Alaskan North Slope from eight Iñupiat villages: Atqasuk, Anaktuvuk Pass, Barrow, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay, and Wainwright. These individuals provided saliva samples as well as genealogical information so that the team could track ancestries and geographical origins.
In a recently published article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Raff and colleagues lay out the information they learned from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of the Iñupiat. People can be grouped by their mtDNA into haplotypes that represent a closely-related maternal lineage. The first thing Raff and colleagues found fit with previous hypotheses: all of the known eastern Arctic haplotypes were present in the Iñupiat samples, meaning the origins of people in the eastern Arctic most likely started with occupation of the Alaskan North Slope. But there were two results that surprised the research team: haplotypes never before found in the Arctic and surprisingly low genetic distances between geographically close groups led to deeper questions about the earliest Arctic inhabitants.
Intermarriage and Back-Migration
In comparing the Alaskan North Slope Iñupiat, the Greenlandic Inuit, and the Canadian Inuit, Raff and colleagues expected to find a close relationship between the neighboring Alaskan and Canadian groups. They found, however, that the Alaskan and Greenlandic groups were much closer genetically. Rather than a single Neo-Eskimo trek eastward from the Alaskan North Slope into Canada and Greenland, these new findings show back-migration from Greenland into Alaska, which aligns with oral histories.
Another surprise was the discovery of haplotype C4, which had never been seen in the Arctic before, and haplotype D2, which had only been seen in Paleo-Eskimo remains from Canada and Greenland. Haplotype C4 is found in contemporary Native Americans, which may indicate recent intermarriage between this group and the Iñupiat. Raff and colleagues' study is the first time D2 has been seen in contemporary Eskimo or Inuit groups. This suggests that the North Slope population may have contributed to both the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo migrations into the eastern Arctic.
The genetic analysis of maternal lineages of the Iñupiat adds a key piece to our understanding of the population history of the Alaskan North Slope. Raff and colleagues found many shared lineages, which she says suggests “that women traveled frequently between these communities.” Through trade and intermarriage, Neo-Eskimo populations across the Arctic formed such close relationships that “they could be considered one single population,” Raff notes.
Community Outreach and Continued Interpretation
When asked what the Elders of Barrow think of the study of their ancestry, Raff says that the study results “fit well with what the Elders have told us in their stories and traditions about Iñupiat history.” She envisions the team's project as a model for research partnership between geneticists and other indigenous peoples, particularly since every step of the project, from the initial research question to interpreting the results, has been done openly with input from the community. Hayes points out that "while it does take time to develop a trusting relationship with the community, community members will often have their own insightful perspective on the hypotheses you want to test. Listen to them." Adding to that, Raff contends that "this partnership has immeasurably strengthened our research, and we hope that community members will be able to use the results from this project in their educational curricula and village programs.”
"The kind of community partnership we see in this Alaskan North Slope project holds hope for helping to overturn a longstanding narrative of distrust," writes Roger Echo-Hawk, an historian of ancient America and a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. Echo-Hawk, who was not involved in this current research, elaborates that "the genetic study of ancient human remains has an important role to play in connecting us all to a richer understanding of our humanity."
What is the future of Arctic genetic research? This study only used mtDNA, Raff explains, which means they got information only from the maternal line, but Hayes and Raff are currently analyzing and interpreting data from the Y-chromosome, which males inherit from their fathers, to try to better understand the history and prehistory of Iñupiat men. In collaboration with Deborah Bolnick at UT Austin, Raff notes, “we’re looking at additional genetic markers across the complete genome.” This expansion of the research project is welcome, Echo-Hawk says, because "the more we know about our history, the more options we have for being ourselves."
Read Raff and colleagues' full article, "Mitochondrial diversity of Inupiat people from the Alaskan North Slope provides evidence for the origins of the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo peoples," free for a limited time in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
