Inuit Culture - Overview of Cultural History

Overview of Cultural History

Archaeologists are certain that the predecessors of today's Inuit originated in the area of the Bering Strait, which separates Asia and North America. The first Eskimo group, known as Paleo-Eskimos, crossed the Strait in 3000 BCE presumably on winter ice, which was long after earlier migrations by the ancestors to the North American Indians. Archaeological finds have revealed that the Paleo-Eskimos moved to the northern Canadian Arctic in 2300 BCE, apparently because of a change in climate. From there they gradually followed the herds of game across the Arctic to Greenland, and dispersed into more distinct nomadic tribes.

Pre-Dorset culture is said to begin when the Paleo-Eskimos settled on the islands of the Canadian archipelago and northern Greenland. The descriptions "Dorset" and "Pre-Dorset" come from Cape Dorset on Baffin Island, the source of an assemblage which in 1925 anthropologist Diamond Jenness identified as originating from a hitherto unknown "Dorset Culture." The Paleo-Eskimos weathered the winter of the high Arctic with much more difficulty than their later descendants because they lacked technologies such as boats, harpoon-tips, dog sleds, dwellings other than skin tents, and sources of warmth other than small fire pits and wood fuels. In the central Canadian Arctic, they mainly hunted muskoxen and caribou with bow and arrow, and fished with barbed devices. Groups living near the coastline hunted seals, walruses and smaller whales by throwing harpoons from the shore or from sea ice.

• Independence I culture 2300 BCE-1500 BCE

This Paleo-Eskimo culture was named after Independence Fjord, where traces of a large settlement were found. Their lodgings were erected on elliptical foundations centered upon box-shaped hearths made of flat stones set on end. These they filled with driftwood, musk ox dung, and bones. They might have started fires with the help of a bow-drill operated by sinews, which was in general use some centuries later.

• Saqqaq culture 2400-900 BCE

In the western and southern parts of the eastern coast of Greenland, the Saqqaq culture developed around 2300 BCE and lasted 1500 years. The center of their settlements was Disko Bay near the place Saqqaq, which lent its name to the culture. The people extended their culture along the fjords and coastlines in the area. The culture of the Saqqaq people shows marked similarity to the culture that in the Canadian Arctic is described as "Pre-Dorset", and the two cultures developed around the same time. Scholars believe that the people of the Saqqaq split off from the Pre-Dorset culture, migrated into Greenland from Ellesmere Island in the north, and later migrated to the southern coast.