Monday, February 15, 2010

February 15, 2010--Inuk: The 4,000 Year-Old Man

Even older than Mel Brooks' 2,000 Year-Old Man, though for sure not as funny, the 4,000 year-old man from western Greenland is still impressive. Some of his hair and a few bones were discovered halfway down that coast, on Qeqertasussuk Island, frozen in the permafrost; and now from these remains they have decoded his genome and a remarkable picture emerges of early man.

And I am not talking about his hair from which they extracted the DNA that was analyzed and which was so thick that at first scientists thought it was from a bear, or the color of his eyes (brown), or his shovel-shaped teeth, or the fact that if he had lived longer he likely would have gone bald (the science is that specific); but rather the remarkable story about where his own ancestors originated. They came from extreme northeastern Siberia, many thousands of miles away, and it makes one wonder why the came to Greenland in the first place. Forget for the moment why they wanted to go to that dark and cold and forbidding place, but think about the extraordinary story that migration represents and what it says about him, them, and most importantly about us. About human daring and the arduous struggle to survive.

The story of this journey about 5,500 years ago is not a relatively "simple" one with Inuk, the 4,000 year-old man's progenitors crossing the land bridge that linked Siberia with Alaska, the dry causeway that enabled the ancestors of North and South America's indigenous people, it is thought, to come west and then turn south between 25,000 and 40,000 years ago when global cooling during that ancient era caused shelves of pack ice to form at both poles and sea levels to drop exposing more land than at present.

Rather, scientists are saying, based on the global climactic conditions at the time, the genome's findings, and the age of the man and his people, the only way to get from Siberia to Greenland at that time was by the long route--over ice flows and tundra in the most northern of latitudes.

To quote from the New York Times of late last week:

The Greenlander belonged to a Paleo-Eskimo culture called the Saqqaq by archaeologists. Using his genome as a basis, a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen determined that the Saqqaq man’s closest living relatives were the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia. His ancestors split apart from Chukchis some 5,500 years ago, according to genetic calculations, implying that the Saqqaq people’s ancestors must have traveled across the northern edges of North America until they reached Greenland. (Full story linked below.)


Let us attempt imagine that more than 3,000 mile trip across the upper edges of North America, all above the Arctic Circle, to Qeqertasussuk halfway down the western coast of today's Greenland where the remains of Inuk were found. Perhaps his people left the village of Uelen on the tip of Siberia's Chukotka Peninsular and headed east just off the coast of present day Alaska, by today's Barrow, and then across or above what is now known as the Northwest and Nunavut Territories of Canada. After about 1,000 miles of this trekking through the region of the Beaufort Sea they sighted the first of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Resolute or Qausuittuq Bay and then, keeping Devon Island on their north, now in Baffin Bay, passing through the Barrow Strait they reached the western coast of Greenland. Then after another 300 miles they finally arrived at Qeqertasussuk where they settled and lived for an unknown time. Perhaps for another thousand years until Inuk died. Thus far, other than his hair and a scattering of small bones, nothing else remains to mark their presence or how they managed to live. It is till a forbidding, rocky place.

And of course nothing is known about what motivated those who became the Saqqaq to leave Uelen, the "black thawed patch" in the indigenous language. Was it, as with most other hunters and gatherers, that they were following their protein supply? Was it because whatever migrating animals they fished for or hunted may have left that thawed patch never to return? And thus, hoping to survive, did Inuk's ancestors then reluctantly head east into the unknown seeking to catch up with them? That is most likely. On the other hand, was there some fierce dispute among the Chukchis people? It would not be either the first or last time that a battle for tribal or political supremacy or some religious or ideological dispute sent the defeated or the dissenters off into new territory.

Or perhaps there were some who were especially adventurous and eager to see what was over the horizon. And since that horizon endlessly receded before them, they kept moving, ever toward the rising sun, until they reached some place that felt like home or they simply ran out of resources or motivation, deciding they would leave the exploring and adventuring for the next generation and ultimately the rest of us. And there it resides. As an opportunity.

I wonder what Mel Brooks' 2,000 Year-Old Man would have to say about this. After all, in his day he witnessed many remarkable things. I suspect he might be concerned about what they could find to eat. Ice is not good as a steady diet. For example, where along the way would they have been able to stop for Chinese food? It is not easy to travel so far from home and not be assured that on Sunday afternoon you can get a shrimp with lobster sauce combination plate. He would probably sigh, shrug his shoulders, and say, "Who ever said that life would be easy. Or that you could find egg rolls in Greenland."

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