Siberians came to North American Arctic in two waves
DNA recasts an ancient mystery of how one far northern culture replaced another
By Bruce Bower
North America’s Arctic regions were first settled around 5,000 years ago by people from Siberia who eventually created a New World culture that lasted for nearly 4,000 years before suddenly disappearing, a new genetic study suggests.
This founding Arctic culture vanished either shortly before or after the arrival of a second, genetically distinct crowd of Siberians. That later band of immigrants spread their Thule culture across Alaska, northern Canada and Greenland and served as the ancestors of present-day Inuits, says a team led by paleogeneticists Maanasa Raghavan and Eske Willerslev, both of the University of Copenhagen.