A Reexamination of Eskimo-Aleut Prehistory
Don E. Dumond
University of Oregon
Don E. Dumond is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.
Search for more papers by this authorDon E. Dumond
University of Oregon
Don E. Dumond is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Linguistic, biological, and archeological data are reconciled to suggest the following: Northeast Asian peoples, Eskimo-Aleuts, and most Northwest Coast Indians are related through post-Pleistocene ancestors, some of whom were present in the New World before 8000 B.C. Speakers of ancestral Eskimo-Aleut languages probably began to appear in the New World only around 2500 B. C. Entering as two waves that were separated in time, they divided themselves between the present zones of Aleut and Eskimo speech, within each of which later internal population movements created the cultural and linguistic uniformity known historically.
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