Eskimo
Nation | Active
3000 BCE to 2057 CE
Eskimos or Esquimaux are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia (Russia), across Alaska (United States), Canada, and Greenland.There are two main groups that are referred to as Eskimo: Yupik and Inuit.
A third group, the Aleut, is related.
The Yupik language dialects and cultures in Alaska and eastern Siberia have evolved in place beginning with the original (pre-Dorset) Eskimo culture that developed in Alaska.
Approximately 4,000 years ago the Unangam (also known as Aleut) culture became distinctly separate, and evolved into a non-Eskimo culture.
Approximately 1,500–2,000 years ago, apparently in Northwestern Alaska, two other distinct variations appeared.
The Inuit language branch became distinct and in only several hundred years spread across northern Alaska, Canada and into Greenland.
At about the same time, the Thule Technology also developed in northwestern Alaska and very quickly spread over the entire area occupied by Eskimo people, though it was not necessarily adopted by all of them.The earliest known Eskimo cultures were Pre-Dorset Technology, which appear to have been a fully developed Eskimo culture that dates to 5,000 years ago.
They appear to have evolved in Alaska from people using the Arctic small tool tradition, who probably had migrated to Alaska from Siberia at least 2,000 to 3,000 years earlier; though they might have been in Alaska as far back as 10,000 to 12,000 years or more.
There are similar artifacts found in Siberia going back to perhaps 18,000 years ago.Today the two main groups of Eskimos are the Inuit of northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and the Yupik, comprising speakers of four distinct Yupik languages and originating in western Alaska, in South Central Alaska along the Gulf of Alaska coast, and in the Russian Far East.In Alaska, the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat, while Inuit is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat.
No universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people, is accepted across the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples.
In Canada and Greenland, the term Eskimo has fallen out of favor, as it is considered pejorative by the natives and has been replaced by the term Inuit.
The Canadian Constitution Act of 1982, sections 25 and 35 recognized the Inuit as a distinctive group of aboriginal peoples in Canada.
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The Arctic Divergence: Linguistic Foundations and Cultural Differentiation
This age represents a pivotal moment in Arctic prehistory, occurring in the immediate aftermath of the great Eskimo-Aleut linguistic split around 4000 years ago (c. 2000 BCE). The ancestral Eskaleut language had recently divided into the Eskimoan and Aleut branches, and the cultural implications of this separation were becoming manifest.
The Denbigh Flint complex continued to flourish across Alaska and northwestern Canada, representing the mature phase of this Paleo-Inuit technological tradition. Proto-Aleut populations were undergoing complex cultural contacts, including ongoing admixture with Late Anangula and Ocean Bay populations in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands.
During these 143 years, the foundations were being laid for the distinct maritime adaptations that would characterize Aleut culture. The Unangan culture of the Aleut was becoming increasingly distinct from other Arctic traditions, developing the specialized marine technologies that would define their civilization for millennia.
The Arctic Small Tool tradition was reaching its geographical limits, with groups having become the first human occupants of Arctic Canada and Greenland, completing one of humanity's most remarkable expansions into extreme environments.
Inuit of the Independence I culture build dwellings with elliptical floor plans north of Independence Fjord, in southern Peary Land.
These people use tools made from rocks and bones, and subsist from hunting wildlife like musk oxen and arctic hares.
Bones of musk oxen hunted down in Peary Land show that the area was inhabited at 2000 BCE.
The oldest discoveries are dated at 2400 BCE.
Discoveries of the time starting around 1800 BCE until 1300 BCE are mostly made south of Independence Fjord.
It is unknown whether the Independence I culture vanished or the people moved south.
The Eskimos reach Greenland and the coast of Labrador by the mid-second millennium BCE, though they lack the sled-dogs later characteristic of their culture.
The Independence II culture, a Paleo-Eskimo culture that flourishes in northern and northeastern Greenland from 700 BCE to 80 BCE, north and south of the Independence Fjord, arises in the same region as the Independence I culture, which had become extinct six centuries earlier.
The Eskimos reach Greenland and the coast of Labrador by this time, though they lack the sled-dogs later characteristic of their culture.
The so-called Old Bering Sea tradition in coastal Alaska and Siberia, focused on seal and walrus hunting, gradually begins to give way to a tradition based on whale hunting.
The Eskimo cross the Strait of Belle Isle to the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, which becomes the farthest southern base they will ever establish.
Thule people (ancestral to modern Canadian Inuit) bring the dogsled—a sled, or sledge, drawn by a team of dogs, probably originating in Siberia—to Arctic North America with their arrival at Nunavut, Canada in about 1000.
The sled consists of two hollow wooden runners attached to crosspieces by sealskin thongs.
A sealskin harness is tied around the shoulder of each dog, from which individual lines extend from a central trace tied to the front of the sled.
The driver, sitting sideways at the front, steers the sled by pushing or pulling in the desired direction.
Eskimo culture, led by the Inuit clan, will also use whaling boats.
Greenland’s Eskimo have completed their millennia-long migration here from continental North America by the thirteenth century.
The Thule peoples’ first contact with Europeans had come from the Vikings, who settled Greenland and explored the eastern Canadian coast.
Norse literature speaks of skrælingar, most likely an undifferentiated label for all the native peoples of the Americas the Norse contacted, Tuniit, Inuit and Beothuks alike.
Sometime in the thirteenth century, the Thule culture began arriving from what is now Canada.
Norse accounts are scant.
However, Norse made items have been found at Inuit campsites in Greenland.
It is unclear whether they are the result of trade or plunder.
One old account speaks of "small people" with whom the Norsemen fought.