The Saqqaq culture was a

Paleo-Eskimo The Paleo-Eskimo meaning ''"old Eskimos"'', also known as, pre-Thule people, Thule or pre-Inuit, were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Chukotka (e.g., Chertov Ovrag) in present-day Russia across North Am ...

culture in southern

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 ...

. It was named after the settlement of

Saqqaq Saqqaq (old spelling: ''Sarqaq'') is a settlement in the Avannaata municipality in western Greenland. Founded in 1755 as Solsiden, Saqqaq had 132 inhabitants in 2020. The village's Kalaallisut name is a translation of the Danish meaning "Sunny S ...

, the site of many archaeological finds. The Saqqaq were the longest-residing residents of Greenland in all of history.

Timeframe

The earliest known

archaeological culture An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between thes ...

in southern Greenland, the Saqqaq existed from around 2500 BCE until about 800 BCE.Saqqaq culture profile
— from the Greenland Research Centre at the

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark, Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from S ...

. This culture coexisted with the

Independence I culture Independence I was a culture of Paleo-Eskimos who lived in northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic between 2400 and 1900 BC. There has been much debate among scholars on when Independence I culture disappeared, and, therefore, there is a marg ...

of northern Greenland, which developed around 2400 BCE and lasted until about 1300 BCE. After the Saqqaq culture disappeared, the

Independence II culture Independence II was a Paleo-Eskimo culture that flourished in northern and northeastern Greenland from around 700 to 80 BC, north and south of the Independence Fjord. The Independence II culture existed in roughly the same areas of Greenland as ...

of northern Greenland and the Early

Dorset culture The Dorset was a Paleo-Eskimo culture, lasting from to between and , that followed the Pre-Dorset and preceded the Thule people (proto-Inuit) in the North American Arctic. The culture and people are named after Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) in ...

of West Greenland emerged. There is some debate about the timeframe of the transition from Saqqaq culture to Early Dorset in western Greenland. The Saqqaq culture came in two phases, the main difference of the two being that the newer phase adopted the use of sandstone. The younger phase of the Saqqaq culture coincides with the oldest phase of the Dorset culture.

Archaeological findings

Frozen remains of a Saqqaq person dubbed "Inuk" were found on

Disko Island Disko Island (, ) is a large island in Baffin Bay, off the west coast of Greenland. It has an area of ,Qeqertarsuaq Qeqertarsuaq (, historically known as Godhavn) is a port and town in Qeqertalik municipality, located on the south coast of Disko Island on the west coast of Greenland. Founded in 1773, the town is now home to a campus of the University of Cop ...

and have been DNA sequenced. He had brown eyes, black hair, and

shovel-shaped incisors Shovel-shaped incisors (or, more simply, shovel incisors) are incisors whose Glossary of dentistry, lingual surfaces are scooped as a consequence of lingual marginal ridges, Crown (tooth), crown curvature, or Basal (anatomy), basal Tubercle (ana ...

. It has been determined that he lived about 4000 years ago and was related to indigenous populations in northeastern

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. The Saqqaq are not the ancestors of contemporary

Kalaallit Kalaallit are a Greenlandic Inuit ethnic group, being the largest group in Greenland, concentrated in the west. It is also a contemporary term in the Greenlandic language for the Indigenous of Greenland ().Hessel, 8 The Kalaallit (singular: ) a ...

; their closest relatives are the modern

Chukchis The Chukchi, or Chukchee (, ''ḷygʺoravètḷʹèt, o'ravètḷʹèt''), are a Siberian ethnic group native to the Chukchi Peninsula, the shores of the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea region of the Arctic Ocean all within modern Russia. They s ...

and

Koryaks Koryaks () are an Indigenous people#North Asia, Indigenous people of the Russian Far East who live immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea. The cultural borders of the Koryaks i ...

. It is not known whether they crossed in boats or over ice.Walton, Doreen
"Analysis of hair DNA reveals ancient human's face."
''BBC News.'' (retrieved 11 February 2010) The Saqqaq people lived in small tents and hunted seals, seabirds, and other marine animals. They used

silicified In geology, silicification is a process in which silica-rich fluids seep into the voids of Earth materials, e.g., rocks, wood, bones, shells, and replace the original materials with silica (SiO2). Silica is a naturally existing and abundant com ...

slate, agate,

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...

, and rock crystals as materials for their tools.

Genetics

A genetic study published in ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'' in August 2014 examined the remains of six Saqqaq individuals buried in Qeqertasussuk, Greenland between ca. 3000 BCE and 1900 BCE. The five samples of

mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the D ...

(mtDNA) extracted belonged to haplogroups D2a1 (four samples) and D2a. These

haplogroup A haplotype is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent, and a haplogroup (haploid from the , ''haploûs'', "onefold, simple" and ) is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a sing ...

s also predominate in the

, and are today found in high frequencies among the

Siberian Yupik Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits (), are a Yupik peoples, Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far Russian Far East, northeast of the Russia, Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Si ...

and

Aleuts Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

, with whom the Saqqaq are relatively closely related. The evidence suggested that the ancestors of the Saqqaq entered North America from Siberia through a distinct migration about 4000 BC, and that they subsequently remained largely genetically isolated from other North American populations.

References

Sources

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External links

4000 year old remains
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saqqaq Culture Archaeological cultures of North America Archaeology of Greenland Prehistory of the Arctic Greenlandic Inuit