Human biogeography and climate change in Siberia and Arctic North America in the fourth and fifth millennia BP

Abstract

This paper explores the relation between the geographic shifts in prehistoric hunting populations and changes in climate between 4500 and 3000 before present (BP) within the polar regions from the Yenisei River in Siberia to Greenland. We have chosen this time period because major human geographic changes occurred over much of northeastern Asia and northern North America, and because these changes appear to be linked, at least in part, to a palaeoclimatic fluctuations. The cultures under consideration have been termed the Early and Middle Neolithic (Syalakh and Bel’kachi) in Siberia and the Arctic Small Tool Tradition (with such local variants as Denbigh, Independence I, Pre-Dorset, and Sarqaq) in North America. Despite these terminological differences, these groups shared such a close similarity in their technology and adaptive patterns that they must have once shared a direct historical relation.