
Melting Yukon ices reveal 5,000-year-old archaeological treasures - curtis
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/john-geddes/melting-yukon-ices-reveals-5000-year-old-archaeological-treasures/
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sounds
More than anything I am ecstatic to hear that First Nations are playing a key
role in the archaeological work. It's a great way to integrate cutting-edge
technology while simultaneously encouraging teenagers to become interested in
their heritage.

~~~
beloch
Based on the age and region of the artifacts, they are probably related to the
Dorset culture. Some of the First nations in the area are descended from the
Thule, who migrated from Siberia and extirpated the Dorset after the date of
the most recent of these finds. As such, this is not really the heritage of
those first nations that is being studied, but people their ancestors may have
encountered and still tell tales of. Other first nations in the area likely
share a common, but distant, ancestry with the Dorset. Most people of European
extraction are far more intimately linked, in terms of decent, to the Roman
empire than any of the modern first nations would be to the Dorset.

It's a bit strange to think of in this way, but the Inuit are almost as new to
North America as Europeans are. Vikings built tentative (and quickly
abandoned) settlements on the East coast of Canada when the Inuit were
establishing themselves in the West and had yet to spread across the North.
The Vikings actually encountered the Dorset before they disappeared, and later
the Thule as they replaced the Dorset. As such, those of us descended from
Vikings are almost as intimately related to the Dorset as the Inuit!

Archaeology is a discipline that, ultimately, tries to tell the story about
those who came before us, no matter our relation to them. First Nations groups
really have no more right to protest these digs than we, here in Canada, have
to protest digs in Italy. It is only our vast ignorance about the pre-history
of the Americas that forces us to entertain their court claims. The artifacts
uncovered by melting ice must be found within a very short period of time
before the stories they can tell are lost for all time. While it is important
to involve First Nations, just as any other Canadians, their interference, to
the point of entirely preventing searches some years and thereby causing the
loss of a part of our heritage, must not be permitted. The history of humanity
belongs to us all.

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coldcode
It's amazing how people who deny climate changes have no good answer to why
ancient glaciers keep melting. But this melting allows for great archeology.

~~~
lallysingh
Do folks who think that the world is only 6000 years old have anything for
human-made artifacts 9000 years old?

~~~
thrownaway2424
Satan put them there to trick us.

~~~
lostlogin
I thought you were right and did some searching. It seems you are wrong
though. It turns out that the method of dating is flawed and old stuff like
fossils have just been dated wrong and are less than 6000 years old. It's so
depressing flicking though these sites.

[http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/BQA/k/...](http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/BQA/k/200/How-
Does-Bible-Explain-Fossil-Ages-Over-6000-Years-Genesis-12.htm)

[http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand-
years.h...](http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand-years.html)

