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Paleo-Eskimos


The Paleo-Eskimo (also pre-Thule or pre-Inuit) were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka (e.g., Chertov Ovrag) in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the rise of the modern Inuit or Eskimo and related cultures. The first known Paleo-Eskimo cultures developed by 2500 BCE, but were gradually displaced in most of the region, with the last one, the Dorset culture, disappearing around 1500 CE.

Paleo-Eskimo groups included the Pre-Dorset; the Saqqaq culture of Greenland (2500 – 800 BCE); the Independence I and Independence II cultures of northeastern Canada and Greenland (c. 2400 – 1800 BCE and c. 800 – 1 BCE); the Groswater of Labrador and Nunavik, and the Dorset culture (500 BCE to 1500 CE), which spread across Arctic North America. The Dorset were the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture in the Arctic before the migration east from present-day Alaska of the Thule, the ancestors of the modern Inuit.

In February 2010, scientists reported they had performed the first genome sequencing of an ancient human. Using fragments of hair 4,000 years old, the National Museum of Denmark, the Beijing Genomics Institute, and additional collaborating scientific institutions sequenced nearly 80% of a Paleo-Eskimo man's genome. The man was found in Greenland and believed to be from the prehistoric Saqqaq culture.


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