The Early Paleo-Eskimo is the first of three distinct periods of human occupation recognized by archaeologists in the eastern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

, the others being the Late Paleo-Eskimo and the Thule. Dates for these occupations vary according to specific geographic region and cultural historical perspective, but it is generally agreed that the Early Paleo-Eskimo approximately spans the period from 4500 BP to 2800-2300 BP.

The Early Paleo-Eskimo tradition

The Early Paleo-Eskimo tradition is known by a number of local, and sometimes spatially and temporally overlapping and related variants including the Independence I culture in the High Arctic and

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

Saqqaq culture The Saqqaq culture was a Paleo-Eskimo culture in southern Greenland. It was named after the settlement of Saqqaq, the site of many archaeological finds. The Saqqaq were the longest-residing residents of Greenland in all of history. Timeframe T ...

in Greenland,

Pre-Dorset The Pre-Dorset is a loosely defined term for a Paleo-Eskimo culture or group of cultures that existed in the Eastern Canadian Arctic from c. 3200 to 850 cal BC, and preceded the Dorset culture. Due to its vast geographical expanse and to histor ...

in the High and Central Arctic and the Baffin/ Ungava region and Groswater in

Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the populatio ...

. More generally these are subsumed under a larger

microlith A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 60,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Austral ...

tradition known as the Arctic Small Tool Tradition. Their ancestral origins are presumed to lie in

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, and ultimately

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and

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

Sources

* Murray, M.S. (2005). Prehistoric Use of Ringed Seals: A Zooarchaeological Study from Arctic Canada. ''Environmental Archaeology'' 10 (1): 19–38. Archaeological cultures of North America Archaeology of Canada Archaeology of Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeology of Nunavut Archaeology of Greenland Indigenous peoples in Northern Canada Prehistory of the Arctic Eskimos Peopling of the Americas {{PreColumbian-stub