Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:52:08.602Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Genetics, prehistory and the colonisation of the Aleutian Islands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

Dixie West
Affiliation:
Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045. E-mail: [email protected]
Michael Crawford
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045. E-mail: [email protected]
Arkady B. Savinetsky
Affiliation:
Group of Historical Ecology, Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The 1800 km-long Aleutian archipelago represents a model ecosystem to track human–environmental interactions across space and through time. Defining the southern margin of Beringia across which much of the early peopling of the Americas occurred, the Aleutians present a 9000 year record of human occupation in the eastern part of the island chain, and more than 3000 years in the west. Molecular evidence demonstrates: (1) that Aleuts shared common ancestry with Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos of Chukotka; (2) the original patterns of migration into the Aleutian islands were from the Alaskan peninsula in a westward direction with no evidence for island-hopping from Kamchatka; and (3) a highly significant statistical relationship between geography and genetics, based on mtDNA sequences, was observed despite previous population disruption. Historically, the Aleutian region is a rich ecotone, with ocean fisheries, abundant populations of large marine mammals, thick kelp forests, complex near-shore ecosystems and intertidal zones, spawning streams, and a highly diverse avian fauna. Each of these environments and resources has been pivotal in shaping the adaptive strategies of human occupants of the island chain since the initial colonisation of the Aleutians from the Alaskan Peninsula. In turn, Holocene human immigration, prehistoric cultural adaptations and subsequent historic events have had reciprocal impacts on the natural systems of the Aleutians.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)