New research shows that the first humans in the Arctic lived there for nearly 4,000 years

A new study, published in Science, shows that the first people to populate the Arctic regions of North America and Greenland were a group who moved into the area from Siberia around 3,000 B.C. They lived in isolation for almost 4,000 years, before disappearing. Previous research has indicated that there were three waves of migration from Asia to the New World; this new study adds a fourth. The first humans are thought to have crossed over the Bering Strait more than 15,000 years ago; this new wave of Paleo-Eskimos, which brought the first people to spread across the northern reaches of Alaska, Canada and Greenland, would have come after the first two waves, but before the Neo-Eskimo or Thule made the journey between continents. Archaeologically, people living in the North American Arctic between approximately 2,500 B.C. and 1,000 A.D. are referred to as the Dorset and Pre-Dorset cultures. (They're classified into those based on the tools and artwork they left behind.) This new study shows that not only did this group have different traditions and culture from the area's later populations but it was genetically distinct from them, as well. continue