Ancient North Eurasians

Ancient North Eurasians lived in Siberia during the Ice Age. Their DNA is a genetic ‘missing link’ between Europeans, Iranians, Siberians and the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Japan.

Ancient North Eurasians lived 25,000 years ago, during the last Glacial Maximum. At the time, homo sapiens lived-in scattered bands across Africa, Eurasia and Australia who seldom met. Some groups survived and passed on their genes; others did not. As these bands lived in different climates and lived distinct lifestyles for thousands of years, they tended to look different. Because most modern peoples descend from numerous lineages, groups like the Ancient North Eurasians do not correspond to any one people today.

Ancient hunter-gatherers periodically returned to the same sites where they deposited tools, the bones of hunted animals and their dead. Archaeologists link sites to common cultures. Archaeogeneticists connect archaeological sites with genetic lineages.

Three sites are associated with the Ancient North Eurasians:

• Mal’ta Buret’ culture
• Yana Rhinocerous Site
• Anfontova Gora

Remains indicate the ANE were hunter-gatherers with partial Neanderthal ancestry. They hunted hares, bears, bison, mammoths, horses and reindeer and built their houses from antlers and bone. Their tools were made from ivory and flint, their clothes from wool and hide. The Mal’ta Buret culture left over 30 ‘Venus figurines’ made from mammoth ivory (pictured). A 2021 study suggests ANE were the first people to domesticate dogs.

The Mal’ta boy was a four-year-old child buried near Lake Baikal, Siberia. He wore an ivory crown, a bead necklace and a pendant shaped like a bird. Genetic sequencing indicates the boy was a typical Ancient North Eurasian who shares DNA with both modern Europeans and Native Americans.

Until the 2000s, scientists thought Native Americans were of entirely East Asian origin. The Mal’ta boy, however, shares no DNA with modern East Asians, indicating the humans who first crossed the Bering Landbridge were of mixed East Asian and ANE ancestry.

Preserved bodies like the Mal’ta boy had brown hair, dark eyes and medium-light skin. The Anfontova Gora site contains the oldest known person to have blonde hair – a woman living around 16,000 BC. 

Over time, the Ancient North Eurasians dispersed and interbred with different populations. In the west, they became herders who spoke proto-Indo-European languages. Others interbred with hunter-gatherers from East Asia, crossed the Bering Land bridge and populated the Americas.

Estimated ANE ancestry among modern peoples:

• Indigenous Americans – 14-38 (highest among Andean peoples)
• Modern Europeans – 10-25%
• Ainu – 21%
• South Asians (Indians) – 10 – 20%
• Iranians – 10-20%

The Kets (above), an isolated group of Siberian hunter-gatherers, have 40% Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.

By noting common elements across mythologies, legends and folk beliefs of their descendants, we can theorise what the ANE might have believed. The traditions of India, Scandinavia, Greece, Siberia and the Americas – from the Sioux to the Aztec – have only one ‘mytheme’ in common: a dog who guards the entrance to the afterlife.

Sources: BBC, DNA Consultants, Nature, National Library of Medicine

See Also:

• ANE descended groups:
  • Ainu
  • Haida
  • Fuegians
  • Plains Nations
• Archaeogenetics:
  • Population Y
  • The Tarim Mummies
  • Cheddar Man
• Norse Mythology

Inuit Mythology

Inuit Mythology covers the indigenous myths and legends of Arctic North America. These myths eschew the creation narratives of most traditions in favour of grisly cautionary tales. They are often as harsh as the environment which made them. Their deities blend the concepts of spirits, humans, animals and monsters.

The Inuit worldview is animistic. Invisible spirits called tornait (singular, tornit) imbue every aspect of the world. Most are harmful and held in fear and reverence by humans. As natural death is so common in the Arctic, respecting taboos and superstitions is essential. Tornait can take the visible form of stones, bears or humans.

Inuit deities resemble powerful tornait, to be feared and appeased rather than worshipped. These include:

• Sedna, ruler of Adlivun
• Anguta, her father and guide of dead souls. In some Greenland traditions, he is a creator god.
• Nanook – spirit of polar bears
• Malina – spirit of the sun
• Igaluk – spirit of the moon

Adlivun is the world beneath the sea. Spirits of the dead travel to this frozen wasteland when they die and remain for a year, then travel to the elusive Land of the Moon, where deer roam and no snow falls. Shamans called annagguit may travel to Adlivun in their dreams to appease the goddess Sedna when a taboo is broken.

Sedna is the mistress of animals. She was once a human woman, tricked into marriage by an evil spirit or, in some traditions, a fulmar.

Her father, Anguta, slew the spirit and took Sedna back on his canoe. On the way home, however, a terrible storm brewed that threatened to kill them both. To appease the ocean, Sedna’s father pushed her off the boat. When she grabbed a hold of the canoe, Anguta cut off her fingers and sent Sedna to the bottom of the sea. 

Her fingers became the creatures of the ocean – the seals, walrus, whales and fish. She descended to Adlivun, where she transformed into a walrus-like creature that rules the underwater realm to this day.

In the Land of the Moon, ancestral spirits play a game with a walrus’s head. Their movements form the Aurora Borealis.

Malina, the spirit of the sun, was once a beautiful woman. Her brother Igaluk lusted after her and made her flee across the sky. To this day, Igaluk chases his sister, neglecting even to eat. As time passes, he withers until he disappears for three days eat once more. Occasionally, on a solar eclipse, he catches up. Igaluk lives on an igloo on the moon with the souls of dead animals. The legend differs amongst tribes: in some versions, the sister is the moon, the brother the sun.

Legends of Sauman Kar -an ancient race of giants– are likely misremembered accounts of the Dorset Culture who lived in the Arctic before the Inuit came. Other mythical creatures include polar bears who walk upright and live in igloos, akhlut – wolf-orca hybrids and qallupaluit – hideous creatures who lurk in the ocean and drown disobedient children. 

Sources: Franz Boas – The Central Eskimo (1888), Canadian Encyclopedia, Inuit Myths, Philip Wilkinson – Myths and Legends (2009)

See Also:

• Inuit
• Myths and Legends

Haida

Haida are the indigenous people of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, and Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, USA. Traditionally they lived by fishing, hunting, raiding and trade.

Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, consists of two main islands and 150 smaller ones. Biologists call it the ‘Galapagos of the North’. The temperate rainforest that covers the islands includes trees over 100 meters tall and moss seven inches thick. Unique species include the Sitka spruce and Haida Gwaii black bear. Migrating birds from around the world nest, and seals and whales beach in Haida Gwaii. Salmon fill its rivers. Today, the archipelago falls under Haida heritage areas and National Parks.

Haida were hunter-gatherers. In lands so abundant in fish and wildlife, however, they could settle in one place and sustainably forage rather than move from place to place – a rare luxury in hunter-gatherer societies. Haida gathered edible plants, hunted deer, birds and bear, and caught salmon and seafood. From hollowed red cedars, they carved canoes that took them as far as California, where Haida not only traded but plundered and enslaved.

There were once 100 self-governing villages in Haida Gwaii. Their people identified with one of two clans – the raven and the eagle. One could only marry a member of the other. Within each clan were 20 lineages, each of which had economic rights to particular groves, rivers and fishing grounds.

Haida art exemplifies the distinct Pacific Northwest style, with stylised depictions of animals such as ravens, eagles, orcas and bears carved and painted onto wood. Symbolising lineage, these images traditionally decorate Haida canoes, houses and, most famously, totem poles. Haida manga began publication in 2001.

The potlatch ritualises social and economic ties between lineages and commemorate births, weddings and deaths. In these public ceremonies, attendants exchange gifts, perform dances and music and settle disputes. They are essential to Haida culture.

Haida worldview was essentially animistic, with a supreme being at the top. Today most mix Christianity with traditional beliefs. As in Pacific Northwest and Koryak traditions, the trickster Raven is central to Haida myth. His schemes inadvertently create the fabric of our world.

The Haida’s ancestors migrated to the islands at the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago, when the rainforests emerged. Their customs and folklore bear striking similarities to the Koryak people of eastern Siberia, meaning the two are likely related.

When Europeans made contact in 1723, there were around 50,000 Haida. An 1863 smallpox outbreak emptied their villages. By the time Canada annexed Haida Gwaii in 1900, there were only 500 left, a number sustained to this day. Like other First Nations, Haida children were victims of the Canadian Indian residential school system in the 20th century. Today there are 501 Haida, 445 of whom speak the language. The name ‘Haida Gwaii’ (meaning Islands of the People), was restored in 2009.

Sources: American Anthropologist, Canadian Encyclopedia, Coast Funds

See Also:

• Inuit
• Apache
• Plains Nations
• Bears

Inuit

Inuit are the indigenous people of the North American Arctic. They live in Greenland and the polar regions of Alaska and Canada. Their ancestors migrated from Asia around 1000, making them the last indigenous people to settle the Americas. 

Inuit means ‘the people’ in Inuktitut. A singular Inuit is an Inuk. 

The word ‘Eskimo’ refers to the related peoples of the Arctic Circle who speak Eskimo-Aleut languages, including Inuit, the Aleuts of Alaska and the Yupik of Kamchatka. Eskimo means ‘snow shoes’ in Algonquin but scholars once thought it came from the Cree ‘askipiw’, meaning ‘eater of raw flesh’. That etymology is now disproven, though Eskimo is still considered derogatory in Canada. Inuit is preferred. 

Inuit in 1920

The ancestors of the Inuit crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia a thousand years ago. Known as the ‘Thule Culture’, their ancestors displaced the Dorset people who came before them and spread across the American Arctic. The Thule had greater numbers and husky-driven sledges which the Dorset lacked. The last Dorset group perished in 1903. Owing to their later migration, Inuit are more closely related to the indigenous Siberians than other Amerindian and First Nations groups. 

Inuit have adapted to the most extreme conditions of any human society. In the Arctic, temperatures can reach -50° and there are periods of 24-hour darkness in winter. There is no wood or domesticable animals. Agriculture is impossible. The traditional Inuit diet was 75% fat and in winter, 100% meat and fish.

Inuit drove sledges, wore fur coats and built skin tents in summer and igloos in winter. They fished, and hunted seals, walrus, caribou and whales, and made harpoons from narwhal horns and walrus ivory. Their adaption to polar environments meant Inuit settlers thrived in Greenland while Norse colonies perished. Kayaks are an Inuit invention. 

European whalers made contact with Inuit in the 1700s. By the 19th century, the measles, smallpox, tuberculosis and alcohol they introduced had killed 90% of the Inuit population.

By the early 20th century, Inuit were hunting with guns and using metal tools. Many made a living selling fox pelts to white traders. Some attended missionary schools but were largely independent of mainstream Canadian society.

The Canadian government asserted control over the Inuit from 1939. Government assimilation policies forced Inuit children into residential boarding schools and assigned them state-sanctioned names. Abuse was rampant. They resettled nomadic Inuit into permanent settlements to lay claim to parts of the Arctic, ended their traditional way of life and forced them into the modern economy. The decimation of whale populations, melting ice caps and oil drilling has since made the traditional Inuit lifestyle untenable.

In the 1970s, university-educated Inuit lobbied for land claims and self-representation. The territory of Nunavut, which is majority Inuit, became self-governing in 1993. 

Today, Canadian Inuit live in four autonomous regions, each located north of the treeline.

• Inuvialuit (Northwest Territories)
• Nunavut (own territory)
• Nunavik (Quebec)
• Nunatsiavut (Newfoundland and Labrador)

Greenland, though under Danish sovereignty, is 80% Inuit. As in Canada, the Danish government resettled Inuit into towns and forced changes in diet and occupation. Resettlement, overfishing and climate change destroyed their traditional way of life in a mere generation. Greenland gained home rule in 1979.

Blanket Toss in Utqiagvik, Alaska

Modern Inuit are impoverished minorities in their respective countries. Many live in isolated communities with little access to roads and hospitals. Canadian Inuit live 15 -20 years less than the average citizen. In both Greenland and Canada, suicide is six times the national average. 

It is not all, however, so bleak. Inuit culture is seeing a revival across Alaska, Greenland and Canada. Traditional visual art and throat singing is taught across the Inuit homeland, and in Nunavut, most children now learn Inuktitut as a first language.

Sources: Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, Inuit Tapariit Kanatami, Minority Rights Group

See Also:

• Inuit Mythology
• The Polar Bear Invasion of 2019
• Greenland Norse

Magic and Religion

According to The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer, humans understand the natural world through science, religion and magic. Before the Scientific Revolution, the latter two were the lenses through which most saw existance. 

Magic is the belief that one can influence the natural world through ritual and incantation. Like science, it assumes an immutable natural law; unlike science, it reaches such conclusions through received wisdom rather than investigation. By working within these laws, a magic-user can harness invisible forces to manipulate matter from a distance. Such belief systems were once universal and still existed in Frazer’s time. Superstitions and taboos persist to this day.

There are two types of magic: homoeopathic and contagious.

Homoeopathic magic assumes that an effect will always resemble its cause – the Law of Similarity. Ruthenian burglars used to throw human bones over a house to induce its inhabitants into a deathlike sleep. While fighting, Malagasy soldiers avoided eating animals killed by spears for fear they would share their fate. Effigies and voodoo dolls use homoeopathic magic.

Contagious magic assumes invisible forces bind things that were once a part of one another. By stabbing a person’s footprints, for example, one could harm their feet. People put baby teeth by mouse holes so new ones would be strong as a mouse’s. One could hurt a person by burning or beating their garments. In many cultures, a placenta’s resting place determined its owner’s fate.

 ‘The fatal flaw of magic’, writes Frazer ‘lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence.’ Belief in magic held because there was no way to refute it. If a rain dance, or a killing curse, appears to fail, for example, a magician needs only wait for the inevitable as proof. Such was the reverence and fear of magic, few were willing to refute it.

Many societies believed magic works through an invisible spiritual world. Spirits of nature and the dead can be manipulated or compelled to do one’s bidding through spells and ritual. Ancient Egyptian sorcerers claimed to manipulate the gods themselves to do their will. 

As human societies grew larger and more complicated, so too did their understanding of the world. Rather than see themselves as the centre of the universe, able to manipulate it to their will, they realised human futility and recognised the spirits as not merely magical, but all-powerful and divine. Thus religion superseded magic.

Religion is the belief in a higher spiritual power which humans can call on through prayer, sacrifice or conciliation. While magic imposes human will on the divine, religion supplicates oneself to it. People can gain supernatural aid not through coercion or spells, but by seeking divine favour. Christianity, in particular, claims the divine is all-powerful and above human whims, making magic antithetical. Pagan deities were cast out as demons or assimilated as saints. The Aztec Empire believed the sun would not rise unless they sacrificed human hearts to Huitzilopochtli.

Religion and magic often intertwined. When praying for rain failed, Cypriot and Siamese peasants cast holy icons into the sunshine to punish them for not heeding their calls. Exposure to harsh sunlight forced the saint or spirit to call the rain. French peasants believed certain priests could perform the mass of Saint Sécaire, a forbidden ritual which compelled the Holy Spirit to kill a designated person.

Science and magic share a belief in natural law. Thus, in Europe, it was not theology but alchemy and Rennaisance magic which made way for the Scientific Revolution. 

‘Its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature.’

Sources: Sir James Frazer – The Golden Bough (1890)

See Also:

• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?
• Folklore of the Orkney Islands
• Rule of Three
• Green Eyed Devils
• Clairvius Narcisse and the Zombies of Haiti

Ruc People

The Ruc are a small tribe indigenous to the mountains of Quang Ngai province, Vietnam. Until 1959, they lived in complete isolation from the outside world as they had for thousands of years. The Ruc were hunter-gatherers who lived in caves and grottos and shunned contact with mainstream Vietnamese society. Upon their discovery, the North Vietnamese government forced their integration. Today they no longer live as hunter-gatherers and are recognised as one of Vietnam’s 53 ethnic minorities.

Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site, is a land of dense mountain jungle that houses the world’s largest caves and oldest limestone deposit. The Ruc have lived there since the Stone Age and their name means ‘cave people’ in a local dialect.

To the ethnic Vietnamese that farmed the lowlands, these mountains were a wilderness home to dangerous beasts and mysterious tribes. Though their ancestors likely settled northern Vietnam at the same time, while the lowlanders adopted agriculture and formed kingdoms, the Ruc and their cousins maintained a hunter-gatherer lifestyle free from outside influence.

In 1959, a group of North Vietnamese soldiers were investigating the aftermath of a bombing in the mountains of Quang Ngai when they spotted a band of ‘forest people’. The strangers were short, naked and incredibly agile. They fled up trees and into caves and grottos. The soldiers followed them and spent all day persuading eleven families to relocate to a nearby village.

Rather than leave them be, the authorities forced integration. According to communist doctrine, history is progressive and the Ruc would be better off by settling down and adapting to modern, agricultural society than remaining in their primitive and oblivious state. By 1971 the Ruc had all abandoned their caves and were living in permanent homes.

The Ruc moved into state-provided houses, and their numbers grew from 109 in 1971 to 500 today. Many longed for their old ways, however, and to this day some still live in caves up to three months a year. In 2013 Ho Tien Nam became the first Ruc to graduate from university. He now works as a teacher.

Anthropologists place the Ruc language in the Chut group, which encompasses five other indigenous tongues and is part of the Austroasiatic family. Their ancestors may have retreated to the mountains when farmers settled northern Vietnam. Their language is small and, because they had no tribal or family names, after 1971 they took Vietnamese ones.

Traditionally the Ruc foraged for food, mainly the edible powder of the Doac tree, fished and hunted small animals. They slept standing up. Ruc believed in magic and cast spells to protect from pregnancy, stave off wild beasts or in, in some cases, cause harm. These spells and rituals are upheld by elders with secrecy and reverence. In 2005, scientists identified the small animal Ruc hunted as the Laotian Rock Rat, an animal they thought died out 11 million years ago.

Sources: English-Vietnam, Species Conservation, Spiritual Travellers Blog, UNESCO

See Also:

• Southeast Asian Migrations
• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?
  
  

Uttermost Part of the Earth

Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), by E. Lucas Bridges, is the definitive story of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The memoirs of the land’s ‘third white native’, it details his life amongst the indigenous Fuegians, their cultures and the effects of colonisation. Part autobiography, part ethnography, part history book and part adventure novel, Uttermost Part of the Earth is the most detailed account we have on a people now extinct.

Lucas Bridges (1874 – 1948) was the eldest son of Reverend Thomas Bridges, who established the Anglican Mission at Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. He grew up amongst the coastal Yaghan people and, as a young man, explored the island’s interior, where previously uncontacted tribes lived.

AF Tschifferly, who rode from Argentina to Washington DC on horseback, convinced Bridges (below) to write down his stories. In his 70s, Bridges applied his lifelong energy to writing this book. It describes his later life – service in WW1, adventures in Paraguay and South Africa, only in passing. Tierra del Fuego is the focus.

The book five parts:

• Ushuaia, 1826-1887: European exploration, Bridge’s early life, the Yaghan.
• Haberton, 1887 – 1899: adventures on the coast, the Manek’enk (Aush), first contact with the Selk’nam.
• The Road to Najmishk (1900-1902): Selk’nam conflict, adventures in the interior
• A Hut in Ona Land (1902-1907) Bridges’ sheep farm. Selk’nam culture, Fuegian animals, myths and legends.
• The Estancia Viamonte, (1907-1910) The story concludes.

Vivid descriptions bring the prehistoric wilderness of Tierra del Fuego to life, its rugged cliffs and islands, snowy forests, mountains, moors and bogs, and the creatures who call it home. Bridges alternates between the main narrative and such descriptions, peppering them with strange and fantastic anecdotes.

While his father dedicated his life to transliterating the Yaghan language, Bridges is most interested in the mysterious tribe beyond the mountains. After making contact, he lives and hunts amongst the Selk’nam hunter-gatherers (whom he calls ‘Ona’, their Yaghan name) for over ten years. He learns their language and customs, makes friends and enemies, and is eventually the only outsider initiated to their lodge. His accounts cover everything from courtship to clothing to secret societies and the Selk’nam’s (lack of) religion. Though the author veers on paternalistic, he treats the Fuegians with genuine respect and is free from the naked racism so common in his time. He tries but does not succeed, to ‘soften the blow of civilization’ and help the Selkn’am adapt. They left no records of their own.

The cast of characters can be bewildering. Many key players have unfamiliar Fuegian names. Bridges does well, however, in describing their backgrounds and personalities, while reminding the reader of past events. Memorable individuals include the insane ‘wizard’ Minkiyolh, the hunter Ahnikin and the gaucho Serafin Aguirre.

The many stories in these pages are fascinating, heartwarming and sad. There are true tales of abduction, murder, hunting trips, shipwrecks, escaped convicts, massacres and suicidal horses woven throughout its pages in simple and matter-of-fact prose.

Overriding the stories, however, is the sobering doom Bridges alludes to from the start. Civilization will triumph. Roads and airstrips will conquer South America’s last frontier, and guns, alcohol and measles will destroy the indigenous way of life.

Bridges does not discuss the Selk’nam genocide at length. That happened in northern Tierra del Fuego in the 1890s, before Bridges made contact. Those he meets are the remainders yet untouched by colonialism. Due to libel, Bridges does not disclose the names of murderous settlers. Their children were still prominent landowners when the book was published.

Obtaining this book was difficult. It went out of print years ago and the only copies online are expensive second-hand ones or third party reprints. I opted for the latter option and paid  $30 to have it delivered from New Delhi. It is a hefty book with well over 500 pages. Unfortunately its many black and white photographs and maps were barely visible. They are one of the books’ main draws.

This passage on page 336 stands out:

“Talimeoat was a most likeable Indian. I was much in his company. One still evening in autumn, just before business was to take me to Buenos Aires, I was walking with him near Lake Kami. We were just above the upper tree level, and before descending into the valley, rested on a grassy slope. The air was crisp, for already the days were getting short and, with weather so calm and clear, there were bound to be a hard frost before sunrise. A few gilt edged, feather clouds broke the monotony of the pale green sky, and the beech forest that clothed the lake’s steep banks to the water’s edge had not yet completely lost its brilliant autumn colours. The evening light gave the remote ranges a purple tint impossible to describe or to paint.

Across leagues of wooded hills up the forty-mile length of Lake Kami, Talimeoat and I gazed long and silently towards a glorious sunset. I knew that he was searching the distance for any sign of smoke from the camp-fires of friends or foes. After a while his vigilance relaxed and, lying near me, he seemed to become oblivious to my presence. Feeling the chill of evening, I was on the point of suggesting a move, when he heaved a deep sigh and said to himself, as softly as an Ona could say anything:

“Yak haruin.” (“my country”)

See Also:

• Fuegians
• How Syuna the Rockfish got his Flat Head (Yahgan Legend)
• Books I Read in 2019
• Why Did Europe Take Over the World?
• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?

Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?

Humanity has come a long way. Since agriculture revolutionised life 10,000 years ago we have traded our tents and caves for high rise apartments and megacities. We have subjected the elements to our will and multiplied to the billions. Yet despite all mankind’s accomplishments, our neurology remains very much hunter-gatherer and ill-suited to the modern world. Is civilization worth it? Were we better off in our natural state?

Our ancestors worked less. Today’s hunter-gatherers in the Arctic Circle and Kalahari Desert ‘work’ an average of forty hours a week. They only live in such hostile climates, however, because more numerous farmers forced them from choicer lands thousands of years ago.  Ancient hunter-gatherers living in bountiful forests or river valleys laboured far less.  The work our foraging ancestors did perform, whether a day’s hunt, exploring new lands or sharpening spearheads around the campfire, was more exciting and fulfilling than sitting all day at an office or factory.

Hunter-gatherers enjoyed nutritious diets. Instead of dairy and grain, products of the Agricultural Revolution, they lived off wild fruit, fish, and meat, free from excess calories, sugar or saturated fat.  They were fit too; in contrast to our sedentary lifestyles where we get by with minimal physical exertion and pass on our ‘unremarkable genes’, hunter-gatherers were constantly on the move and used all parts of their body. The average Stone Age human was as fit as an Olympic athlete. As foragers were not reliant on a single food source like wheat, rice or potatoes, famine was almost unheard of.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were disease-free. Epidemics proliferate when dense numbers of humans concentrate in one place.  Sure, isolated forager bands lack immunity to modern diseases but before the Agricultural Revolution, said diseases did not exist. Hunter-gatherers do not require sewerage because there are so few of them while a lack of inter-connectivity impedes the spread of epidemics. 

Life expectancy of today’s hunter-gatherers is 30-40 years, 60 if discounting infant mortality. Though far healthier than a medieval peasant, our ancestors still lacked modern medicine. Serious injury could be a death sentence.

Like modern hunter-gatherers, our ancestors lived in tight-knit groups of 40-50 people (bands). Some bands were monogamous, others practised free love and collective parenting. All shared intense bonds within their community, however. Contact with other groups was minimal, and bands could go years without meeting outsiders. In contrast, we meet thousands of people in a lifetime. Ancient foragers valued strong social bonds more than possessions or ‘success’. As hunter-gatherers owned only what they could carry, there was noticeably less hierarchy or inequality.

I have previously discussed on this blog that hunter-gatherers are generally more violent than settled, industrial societies. Ancient foragers could easily flee from violent neighbours to new and uninhabited lands, however, a luxury not afforded to their modern counterparts. Intra-band violence depends on social customs and the temperament of its members. Without states to govern them, foragers lacked codified laws to restrict human behaviour and protect the needy. The tradeoff? They were free.

According to Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in ignorant bliss. According to Thomas Hobbes, life in the state of nature was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ Our ancestors lived in a more violent and dangerous world than modern affluent societies, if not previous centuries, and few of their babies survived. Those that did, however, grew to be fitter, healthier and better-connected adults.

Conversely, we have far more possessions, knowledge and opportunities at our disposal. Life may be safer, easier and more comfortable than it has ever been but advertising and mass media constantly remind us how it could be better. What is happiness other than subjective well-being measured against expectations? Some scholars suggest nothing could surpass ‘the wild excitement and sheer joy experienced by a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt’. Ignorance is bliss. Given our psychological makeup has yet to catch up with the rapid change in life over the past 10,000 years, they could be right. ‘Happier’ and ‘better off’, however, are difficult concepts to define – it all depends on what you value.

Sources: Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Phys.org

See Also:

• How Violent are Hunter-Gatherers?
• Ainu
• Apache
• Fuegians
• Haida
• Inuit
• Plains Nations
• Ruc
• Sentinelese

The Southern Dispersal

The Southern Dispersal, also called the Great Coastal Migration, was the first major migration Out of Africa.  50,000 – 100,000 years ago a single band of Homo Sapiens crossed the Bab-el Mandeb Straits to Asia. Over multiple generations their children migrated across the Indian Ocean coastline until they reached Australia and beyond.  Their direct descendants form the ancient populations of Oceania and Southeast Asia.

Ice Age sea levels were 77 meters lower than today. Glaciers and pack ice trapped much of the world’s water and what are now shallow seas was then dry land. A land bridge closed the mouth of the Red Sea, Borneo, Java and Sumatra were joined to Indochina as the land of Sunda, and New Guinea and Australia formed a single continent called Sahul.  Though foreign to Homo Sapiens, Eurasia was already home to other human species like Neanderthals, Homo Erectus and Denisovans.

Archaeological sites and fossils give a rough idea of when Homo Sapiens were first living in a particular place.

• 85,000 BC – Yemen (Al Wusta site)
• 75,000 BC – Southern India (Jwalapuram Site)
• 70,000 BC – Phillipines (Callao Man)
• 44,000 BC – Australia (Lake Mungo remains)

Why the coast? The pioneers of the Southern Dispersal were beachcombers. Deliberately avoiding the colder northern climes, they followed the coast where shellfish and tropical fruit were plentiful and there was no competition from Neanderthals. Due to the scant number of archaeological records, their numbers were likely small. The ancestral band who crossed the Red Sea like Moses was probably no more than 160 individuals.

The later ‘Northern Dispersal’, which gave rise to the Eurasian peoples, either branched off  early from the Southern Dispersal or was a later migration from Africa. They expanded north as the ice caps melted.

Today direct descendants of the Southern Dispersal include:

• India: Andaman Islanders (Onge, Jarawa, Sentinelese), Dravidians?
• Sri Lanka: Vedda
• Malaysia: Semang and Senoi
• Philippines: Aeta, Ati and Manamwa
• Thailand: Maniq
• Melanesia: Papuans, Solomon Islanders, Fijians, Vanuatuans, Kanaks
• Australia: Australian Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders

Jarawa girls, Andaman Islands

Senoi children, Malaysia

Aeta man, Philippines

Women from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea

Korowai man and child, West Papua

Children from the Solomon Islands. Blonde hair sometimes shows in children, though the associated gene is different from the European one.

Arunda Aboriginal man, Australia

Though diverse in their own right, descendants of the Southern Dispersal stand out from later arrivals by their dark features and woolly hair (though not for Aborigines). Unlike most Eurasians, they maintained high levels of melanin because they never left the tropics. In Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands they are called Negritos, owing to their black skin and short stature.  Rising sea levels and new migrations have forced them into isolation, where many still live as hunter-gatherers.

Humans arrived in Sahul by boat. The migrants spread across the continent and hunted Australia’s megafauna to extinction. By the time outsiders arrived tens of thousands of years later, there were at least 600 distinct Aboriginal groups, each with their own language. Despite being only 1.5% of the world’s population, Melanesia is home to 20% of its languages.

Like all non-Africans, ‘Australo-Melanesians’ have 1% Neanderthal ancestry (though less than Europeans).  Unique to them however, is the 4-5% DNA they inherit from another species – the mysterious Denisovans. Interbreeding must have occurred in Southeast Asia, as the Andamanese lack Denisovan admixture. Aside from genetics, all the Denisovans have left us is a fingerbone and a skull.

Sources: New Scientist, Smithsonian Magazine, Nicholas Wade – Before the Dawn

See Also:

• Population Y
• Polynesian Migrations
• The Sentinelese
• Southeast Asian Migrations
• Taiwanese Negritos

Fuegians

‘Fuegians’ are what Charles Darwin called the indigenous people of Tierra Del Fuego, the islands at the bottom tip of South America.  An isolated population at the world’s end, Fuegians descend from the first people to inhabit the Americas. They were the southernmost population on earth.

In the 1800s four cultures inhabited Tierra Del Fuego:

• the Kawesqar (or Alacalufe), population 5,000
• the Selk’nam (Ona), population 3,000
• the Yaghan (Yamana), population 2,500
• the Manek’enk (Haush), population 300

Tierra Del Fuego is Spanish for ‘Land of Fire’. Ferdinand Magellan named it after the signal fires he saw dotting its islands when he sailed through in 1520. A desolate, windswept land where rain is incessant and temperatures reach -20, Tierra del Fuego is the closest landmass to Antarctica. Harsh winters prevented agriculture and restricted its inhabitants to hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

Though lacking in vegetation, Tierra del Fuego teems with wildlife including cormorants, penguins, sea lions, foxes, whales, seals, otters, and the guanaco, a cousin of the llama.

The Selk’nam and Manek’enk lived on Isla Grande, the largest island – the Selk’nam in the inland plains and the Manek’enk on the western peninsular. The Manek’enk arrived first, followed by the Selkn’am, who pushed them to the island’s coldest corner. They spoke related languages and followed the guanaco herds, eating their meat, making clothes from their skin and bowstrings from their sinews.

Both peoples were notably tall – men averaged 6 feet, more than other Amerindians or contemporary Europeans. They celebrated an initiation ceremony called a ‘hain’, similar to the potlatches of the Pacific Northwest.

The Yaghan and Kawesqar were ‘sea nomads’ who travelled by canoe to and fro the smaller islands in search of seafood and stranded whales. Unlike the Selkn’am and the Manek’enk, the Yaghan were accomplished swimmers. Yaghan women dived underwater to forage for oysters and mussels while the men hunted birds and marine mammals with harpoons.

The Yaghan, despite living in freezing temperatures, wore minimal clothing, swam naked, and often slept in the open. For warmth, they used fires and lathered their bodies in animal fat. It is possible the Yaghan evolved warmer body temperatures in response to the cold.

Despite their similarities in lifestyles, the Yaghan and the Kawesqar both spoke language isolates and had little contact with each other, the Manek’enk or the Selk’nam.

Fuegians had no social structure or concept of property. Only shamans – healers and intermediaries with the spirit realm – held a place of privilege.

Fuegian ancestry is distinct from other Amerindians. Scant clues link them to ‘Population Y’, a mysterious group related to Melanesians and Australian Aborigines who may have lived in South America before Siberian hunters crossed the Bering land bridge 13,000 years ago. Selk’nam cave and body painting bore a striking resemblance to that of Australian Aborigines, as did the Fuegians’ eyesight, which Darwin observed far surpassed that of his crew.

Early European explorers left the natives alone. Passers-by like Magellan and James Cook were more interested in finding sea routes to Asia than colonising the cold islands. When the Beagle visited in 1829, Charles Darwin described his interaction with the Yaghan as ‘without a doubt the most curious and interesting spectacle I have ever beheld.’

From 1840, the new nations of Chile and Argentina expanded into the region and encouraged European migration to stake their claims.  When they discovered gold in 1880, the trickle became a flood. The Chilean and Argentine governments offered free land to sheep farmers and prospectors on Isla Grande.

The Selk’nam met a cruel fate. As white colonists pushed them aside and thinned the guanaco herds, the Selk’nam hunted sheep instead – the strange ‘white guanaco’ who now roamed their hunting grounds. In retaliation, the colonial companies issued bounties – one pound sterling for every dead Selk’nam, half for a child. They accepted either a pair of ears, hands or a head as proof. For 15 years, headhunters massacred the Selk’nam and the Manek’enk with impunity.

Julius Popper was the genocide’s chief perpetrator. Romanian by birth, this latter-day conquistador designed the layout of Havanna, Cuba, and built a fortune in Fuegian gold. Popper’s private army hunted the Selk’nam like animals, poisoned their food and shot them on sight.

The colonists killed 97% of the Selk’nam population. Survivors were resettled on nearby islands or shipped off to human zoos in Europe. In the 1920s a measles outbreak killed the remaining population. Though some 2,000 claim Selkn’am heritage today; along with the Manek’enk, their language and way of life is extinct.

The Yaghan and the Kawesqar hardly fared better. Sealing and whaling reduced their food sources and foreign disease took its toll. Today 2,622 Kawesqar (15 pureblooded) and one Yaghan remain.

Sources:  Academia.edu, Ancient Pages, Beagle Project, Borgen Project, Chimua Adventures, Don Macnaughton’s Bibliographies, Unesco

See Also:

• Don Macnaughton’s Bibliographies – the Haush (Manek’enk) Indians of Tierra Del Fuego
• Museologica Scientifica – Tierra del Fuego, its ancient inhabitants, and the collections of skeletal remains in the Museums of Anthropology of Florence and Rome
• Population Y
• A Fuegian legend
• E. Lucas Bridges – Uttermost Part of the Earth