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The Peopling Of the Aleutians
Few Aleuts still live in their ancestral homeland, but their genetics and archaeology offer a rare glimpse into one of humanitys last great migrationsand into the mysterious peopling of the Americas
ADAK ISLAND, ALASKAClam Lagoon, at Sadly, most of the Aleuts were evacuthe northern edge of this volcanic island, is a ated from their ancestral islands during peaceful refuge from the wind-ravaged tides World War II, never to return. And yet Adak of the Bering Sea. Sea otters do the back- today has become the center of intense stroke in its tranquil waters, and puffins exploration into when, how, and why the and murrelets roost on the treeless shores. Aleutians were peopled. Many of todays About 7000 years ago, kayak-paddling Aleuts can trace their ancestry back to the humans arrived here, setting up housekeep- islands rst inhabitants, so the Aleutians ing on a bluff overlooking both the lagoon are a perfect storm of deep time depth, says and the sea. Exceptionally well-adapted to Anna Kerttula de Echave, director of the maritime life, these rst colonists National Science Foundations promptly set about exploiting the (NSFs) Arctic Social Sciences local riches: They ate the otters [Link] Program, which funds much of and the birds, as well as seals and Podcast interview the work in the islands. Only in sea lions. They shed for cod and a few places on the globe do you with author Michael Balter. greenlings with hooks made from nd such a continuous record of the birds wing bones, and they human occupation. made tools using obsidian brought from The Aleutsstory also opens a window into another island hundreds of kilometers away. the peopling of the Americas as a whole. The Before long, a smaller group left Adak to Aleuts descend from ancestors who lived in colonize yet more islands to the west. Asia at least 13,000 years ago, making them These people, the ancient Aleuts, began part of the great migrations across the nowexploring the 2000-kilometer Aleutian archi- submerged Bering Strait land bridge into pelagothe worlds longestat least 9000 North America. Their history is obviously years ago. Because they had the islands to distinct from that of the groups who continthemselves for thousands of years, research- ued farther south into continental North and ers say the archipelago is a living laboratory South America. But because the Aleuts have for studying human migratory behavior. I been relatively isolated for so long, researchdont think there is a better model than the ers can more clearly read their ancient preAleutians, says geneticist Michael Crawford history from their genes and archaeology, of the University of Kansas, Lawrence. a task more difficult farther south where internal migrations may have blurred the earliest records. To some, the Aleuts maritime adaptations strengthen the idea that the rst Americans were sea travelers (Science, 4 March 2011, p. 1122). The Aleutians show that a coastal route is entirely reasonable, says archaeologist Lucy Johnson of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Others counter that the Aleutians were settled too late to have a bearing on the land-versussea debate. I have great difculty with this notion, says archaeologist Don Dumond of the University of Oregon, Eugene. Either way, the story of the Aleutians reveals how maritime migrations work. We are coming to understand the dynamics of island colonization, Crawford says. Two waves The written history of the Aleutians starts in 1741, when Russian explorers led by Vitus Bering discovered the Aleuts and changed their lives forever. At the time, the Aleuts were hunting sea mammals and living in rectangular huts. The Russians turned the Aleutians into a fur factory, pressing the Aleuts into servitude and moving them from island to island. Historians estimate that they numbered up to 16,000 in 1740, but by 1900, disease, starvation, and suicide had slashed
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Refuge from the winds. A narrow isthmus separates Adaks Clam Lagoon (left) from the stormy Bering Sea.
their population by up to 90%. The Americans who took over in 1867 were apparently more benign: By 1920, Aleut numbers began to bounce back, and they grew from about 3000 to 8000 by 1980. Beginning in the late 1800s, scientists began to visit the Aleutians, and in the 1930s famed Smithsonian anthropologist Ale Hrdli ka gathered dozens of Digging deep. Archaeologists are nding clues across the Aleutians, including at Adaks Clam Lagoon (left) and on Kiska, skeletons. Hrdlika concluded where Veronica Lech of the Memorial University of Newfoundland holds an ancient sea cow rib. that the Aleutians had been settled by two consecutive groups: the origi- much around for several hundred more the journal Arctic in 2010. The Neo-Aleuts nal settlers, the Paleo-Aleuts, who had high years, says anthropologist Richard Davis may have been more sophisticated technologand narrow skulls (dolichocranic), and the of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. ically or more hierarchical in social organiNeo-Aleuts, who had wider, rounder skulls About two-thirds of living Aleuts belong to zation, Coltrain says, possibly because they (brachycranic). haplogroup D and one-third to haplogroup came from a more complex and populous That basic idea has been conrmed by A, according to work by Crawford and his Alaskan peninsula setting. more recent research. In new studies of 86 co-workers, and they are presumed to be Archaeologists are working all across of Hrdlikas skeletons, ranging from 3400 to the result of admixture between Paleos and the islands, and additional burials that might 380 years old, anthropologist Joan Brenner Neos. Crawfords research with modern yield more ancient DNA are turning up as cliColtrain of the University of Utah in Salt Aleuts also suggests that they carry some mate change accelerates coastal erosion, says Lake City found that the skulls did indeed Paleo-Aleut DNA, because their ancestors archaeologist Debra Corbett of the U.S. Fish separate into these two groups, and that all branched off from other Arctic peoples about and Wildlife Service in Alaska. However, the skulls older than 1000 years were dolicho- 13,000 years agolong before they colo- Aleuts, like other Native American groups, cranic. The groups appear genetically dis- nized the islands, perhaps when they were are sometimes hesitant to allow research on tinct, Coltrain says. Paleo-Aleut [skulls] still in Asia or Beringia. skeletons (Science, 8 October 2010, p. 166). are typical of the earliest people to occupy The Neo-Aleuts were not only physically Our policy is that if human remains are the New World, like the Kennewick Man and but also culturally distinct. For example, Davis found, they must be immediately reburied, the Spirit Cave Woman. They all look more says, after 1000 years ago, the archaeological says Melvin Smith, archaeology coordinator European than Asian, perhaps because they record reects a shift to more sophisticated for the Anchorage-based Aleut Corp., which descend from European populations that stone tool types as well as changes in house represents native interests. occupied the Siberian region. styles from single to multiroomed structures. Nevertheless, Smith, who grew up on Recent genetic work conrms the distinc- The Neo-Aleuts ate more big marine mam- two of the islands, says archaeology helps tion: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from mals such as sea lions and seals, while Paleo- native Aleuts to better understand our own 69 of Hrdlikas skeletons showed that Neo- Aleuts dined more on smaller animals such as history and culture. And sometimes the Aleuts, like most modern Aleuts, descend birds and sea otters, according to an isotopic corporation makes exceptions. For examfrom a common ancestor that carried genetic study of their bones that Coltrain published in ple, in a new edited volume, Corbett and markers known as haplogroup her colleagues report on the D, according to recent work 350-year-old remains of a Island arc. The Aleutian by University of Utah genetchild from one of the central archipelago, the worlds icist Dennis ORourke. But islands, who was a member A L A S K A longest, stretches for 2000 kilometers. most Paleo-Aleuts were memof haplogroup D like the Neobers of haplogroup A, as are Aleuts. Isotopic studies show Anchorage most groups now living in that the child ate shellsh and Arctic North America. sea birds and was infected B E R I N G Hrdlika argued that the with roundworms and tapeKodiak Island S E A Pribilof Neo-Aleut populations came worms that often contaminate Islands from the Alaskan mainland sea mammal meat. Commander Islands and replaced the Paleo-Aleuts. Anangula Shemya But Coltrain and others have From east or west? D Attu North Kiska Adak Asia N America found that the newcomers in Such recent burials offer clues Buldir A Amchitka L fact coexisted with the origito the lives of the Neo-Aleuts, S I A L nal settlers. The long-headed but what of the ancient PaleoE U T I A N Paleo-Aleuts were still very Aleuts? Where did they come
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Bounty from the sea. With kayaks, the Aleuts colonized islands and exploited maritime riches, as seen in this 19th century painting by Henry Wood Elliott.
from, and when did they get here? For much Russia, then their southerly shortcut across of the 20th century, such questions went the Bering Sea may have been independent unanswered, as few researchers reached the of the larger Beringian migrations. remote archipelago. Then in 1942, after the Some Russian archaeologists had argued attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded that the rst Aleuts entered the archipelago the western islands of Attu and Kiska and from the west, via the Commander Islands put the inhabitants in concentration camps in near Russias Kamchatka Peninsula. (The Japan. In response, the Americans built a mil- far-western Commander Islands belong to itary base on Adak and evacuated nearly all Russia, while the rest of the Aleutians are the Aleuts to abandoned canneries in south- U.S. territory.) But American archaeologists east Alaska. Only a few dozen families sub- pointed out that the earliest known Aleutian sequently made it back to their native islands. archaeological site was radiocarbon-dated to The Aleuts suffered tremendously, says 9000 years agoand it is located in the east, archaeologist Dixie West of Kansas State on Anangula Island. University, Manhattan. Investigations into Aleut prehistory came to a standstill. Then after WWII, the islands were caught up in the Cold War. Adak housed up to 6000 soldiers and sailors, and civilian access to the island was limited. Finally, in the late 1990s, the base closed. Although no Aleuts had lived on Adak since the 1800s, some now set- The old ways. Colonization disrupted Aleut culture (seen in painting, left), and WWII forced the children in this 1938 photo tled there. Beginning in to leave their island. But some traditions, such as dancing regalia (right), have been preserved. 1998, Corbett, West, and other archaeologists began to visit, eager to To resolve the issue, West, Corbett, and somewhat in cultural traditions, according to uncover the story of one of the last great peo- a handful of others began excavations and recent archaeological work. This really blew plings of the world. radiocarbon dating on the islands. They my mind when you consider everything that They began to tackle one of the most found that the western islands were first has happened to the Aleuts, Crawford said. basic and yet controversial questions about occupied about 3500 years ago, relatively The correlation between genetics and geogthe settling of the Aleutians: Were they col- late. Then in 2005, dates from radiocarbon raphy was phenomenal. onized from west to east, or the reverse? If and volcanic ash put sh bones on Adak, at Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, they came westward from Alaska, then they site ADK-171 overlooking Clam Lagoon, at Urbana-Champaign, agrees that there is a must rst have crossed the Beringian land nearly 7000 years ago. This demonstrated very clear pattern from east to west in the bridge to the Americas, making them part of a clear east-west pattern of migration. It mtDNA haplogroup proles. But he questhat great migration. But if they came from looks as though the Aleutians were occupied tions whether that is a relic of migrations that
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from the east, agrees paleoecologist Arkady Savinetsky of the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow. Recent genetic studies bolster the archaeological evidence. Despite the fact that few today live in the islands of their grandparents, Aleuts remember where they came from, and their memories have helped create a remarkably sharp portrait of geography and genes. Each island community had distinctive dance regalia, and an Aleuts origins can still be identied from the ceremonial costumes he or she wears today, explains Mike Swetzof, who was born on St. George Island and is now mayor of Adak. Crawfords team has now analyzed mtDNA from more than 250 Aleuts from 11 islands as well as displaced Aleuts living in Anchorage and compared them with mtDNA from people elsewhere in the Arctic. The Aleuts bear little genetic resemblance to people of the Kamchatka Peninsula, as might have been expected had the islands been colonized from west to east. And the data show a striking correlation between the island that families originally came from and their maternally inherited mtDNA. The Aleut populations are distributed spatially like beads on a necklace, Crawford and his co-workers wrote in 2010 in Human Biology. Indeed, the mtDNA haplogroups can be further subdivided into three groups, corresponding to the eastern, central, and western Aleutians, regions that also differ
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took place as early as 9000 years ago or perhaps reects more recent movements along the Aleutian chain. (The paternally inherited Y chromosomes dont show such a clear geographic pattern, probably because Russian men had children with Aleut women, researchers agree.) Who are the Aleuts closest relatives today? To date, no one has sequenced the whole genome of an Aleut, although researchers are working on it. But the mtDNA data cluster them with Siberians and the people of Russias northern Chukchi Peninsula, which was once part of the Bering Strait land bridge. Aleuts show little mtDNA resemblance to Alaskan Eskimos, possibly refuting earlier assumptions that these groups separated relatively late, Crawford says. Comparisons of mtDNA from Aleuts, Eskimos, and Asian groups suggest that the Aleuts and Eskimos originally shared a common ancestor in Asia but went their separate genetic ways at least 11,000 years ago, probably while still in Asia; they may even represent separate migrations. This suggests that there have been a lot of population expansions out of Beringia and into the Americas, Malhi says (Science, 23 September 2011, p. 1692). These populations had a dynamic history of extinction, admixture, and expansion. Colonizing by kayak One foggy Thursday last June, a team of archaeologists led by Diane Hanson of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, boarded the 3.5-hour ight to Adak, only to circle the island and turn back to Anchorage because of low visibility. They made it out the following Sunday, then hopped aboard the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ship the Tiglaxwhich provides a ferry service for researchers in the Aleutiansto a remote spot in western Adak, where they camped for 2 months, excavating prehistoric Aleut houses. This latest work, at an inland site, provides new evidence that the versatile ancient Aleuts exploited habitats all over the islands, not just on the coasts. But theres no denying the power of the sea in Aleut life. And theres no doubt that whoever came to the Aleutians, and when, must have done it by boat. During glacial times, the easternmost islands were part of Beringia. But the rest of the Aleutians, including Adak, have been in open sea for more than 20,000 years. The Aleuts encountered by the Russians were traveling between islands in kayaks and umiaks (larger open boats) made from driftwood or whalebone frames and covered with seal skins. Remains of such boats have been found at numerous Aleutian sites dating back about 2000 years; researchers assume that the rst Aleuts had similar boats, although the evidence does not preserve over time. The fact that we nd obsidian on Adak that comes from an island 1000 kilometers to the east indicates that these folks were moving around and they werent doing this by swimming or walking between the islands, West says. Those seas were treacherous. Its no surprise that the Aleutians were colonized after the rest of the Americas: Massive ice sheets blocked the way from the Alaskan peninsula to the Aleutians until about 9000 years ago, according to work in the 1970s. The Paleo-Aleuts probably could have landed on glacial shores and spent the night, Johnson says. But it wasnt a place they could live. Once the sea route was clear, however, the ancient Aleuts moved swiftly. The earliest inhabitants we know of, at Anangula, camped virtually right on top of glacial till, Davis too, was rst settled during a cold period. Cold periods might also have dampened the wicked winds of the Bering Sea, say Savinetsky and West, who point to earlier work suggesting that cooling in the north Pacic may have occurred during periods of weakened cyclonic activity. Did cooler temperatures mean weakened cyclonic activity, thus less high waves, and greater marine productivity? West asks. If so, she says, then perhaps folks were more likely to explore and nd new places. When the ancient Aleuts did go exploring, Crawford says, they probably did so in family groups, splitting off from larger island populations and setting up residence on islands farther west. But why did they keep trekking westward, exploring new territory? No one knows for sure. Some researchers chalk it up to human
Frigid waters. Cold-loving cod (inset) hint that the Aleutians were colonized during cold spells.
says. This suggests that as soon as those small islets were clear of ice, hunters from the mainland came to exploit available resources right away. Indeed, some researchers say, the islands abundant maritime resources might have provided sustenance as good as or better than that available on the mainland. The Aleuts became adapted to a kind of life that was quite rich, richer than most of the terrestrial areas, Dumond says. As the population grew, it dug itself in to that way of living. New evidence suggests that the pulse of migrations from east to west may correlate with times when the sea was coldest and most productive. Three western Aleutian islands were apparently rst occupied during a long cold spell that started 3350 years ago, according to a paper by Savinetsky in a 2010 edited volume. In a second volume just published, Savinetsky, West, and others report that about 13% of the sh species at Adaks 7000-year-old ADK-171 site were coldloving saffron cod. This suggests that Adak,
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natureour constant search for new lands and endless curiosity, says archaeologist Christine Lefevre of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Corbett says she wonders about it all the time. I was on Adak one cloudless, sunny day. I climbed a mountain where I could look out at the other islands. I imagined all those villages and the people living in them, boats on the water, smoke coming out of the houses. This was really a populated landscape. And yet there was lots of elbow room on the Alaskan peninsula and in the eastern Aleutians. But people still kept aiming for the horizon. They kept moving forward. MICHAEL BALTER
Additional Reading D. West et al., Eds. The People Before: The Geology, Paleoecology and Archaeology of Adak Island, Alaska. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford (2012). D. Corbett et al., Eds. The People at the End of the World: The Western Aleutians Project and the Archaeology of Shemya Island. Aurora, Anchorage (2010).
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