
Did humans approach the southern tip of South America more than 18k years ago? - duaneb
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/archaeology/america/dillehay-monte-verde-2015.html
======
JoeAltmaier
The Inuit have sea-going kayaks that can ride waves down the coast for 100's
of miles with barely touching a paddle. I've wondered why, once the Bering
Strait was crossed, it would take more than one summer for early explorers to
'discover' North and South America.

~~~
willvarfar
I think I recall reading about how surprised Inuit communities in Canada were
to encounter the early western explorers; they didn't know they weren't the
only humans in the world.

Which raises the question, why didn't the Inuit explore south?

~~~
mordechai9000
Some isolated groups aside, there was widespread travel and trade in the era
prior to the arrival of Europeans. But it could be risky. When you depend on a
migratory existence, screwing up can mean watching your family starve. Not to
mention, some groups were hostile.

The Athabascans living on the Koyukuk river were supposably the last group of
Alaskan natives to make contact with white people. When they met up with
Russian fur traders, they already had tobacco and metal artifacts.

Of course, prior to that, people did explore south, in the course of the
settlement of the Americas.

~~~
willvarfar
I don't know the episode I am recalling, but it was on QI. And they said that
all their metal things were from meteorites.

~~~
dalke
The Copper Inuit in northern Canada (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Inuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Inuit)
) mined and worked their own copper.

> [They] exchanged goods, particularly copper and driftwood, with the
> Inuvialuit, the Caribou Inuit, and the Netsilik. There were occasional
> contacts with Athapaskan Indians to their south - [http://what-when-
> how.com/native-americans/inuit-copper-nativ...](http://what-when-
> how.com/native-americans/inuit-copper-native-americans-of-the-arctic/)

In addition to meteoric iron, the Inuit of Greenland also used telluric iron -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_iron)
.

~~~
willvarfar
Here's the episode:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdOrE_PO0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdOrE_PO0c)

[http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/qi/episodes/7/4/](http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/qi/episodes/7/4/)

"\- The Arctic Highlanders got their cutlery from metal that came from three
meteorites. A man called Ross (after whom Ross Sea is named and who was the
first man ever to get up close to the North Pole) observed that a tribe of 200
Inuits in 1818, whom he was the first to encounter, made their cutlery from
bone and from the metal taken from three meteorites that they named "The
Woman", "The Dog" and "The Tent", after what they thought they looked like.
The tribe thought that they were the only people on the planet before Ross met
them. 70 years later, Admiral Peary, who claimed to be the first man to reach
the North Pole (although the claim is now largely discredited) stole the
meteorites and sold them to a museum for $40,000. He also took six Inuit
children with him, four of whom died of tuberculosis immediately. One of them
survived and was brought up by an American couple. He then discovered that his
father's bones where a public exhibit in the Natural History Museum in New
York. He complained but Peary refused to do anything about it. However, he did
give him enough money to return home. The bones were not returned till 1993."

So for all the examples of Inuit populations that did know there were others,
here's one that apparently didn't.

~~~
dalke
I can't watch the video because 'This video contains content from Fremantle
International, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.'

The phrase 'Arctic Highlanders' helped identify them as the Inughuit.
[http://www.everyculture.com/North-America/Inughuit-
Orientati...](http://www.everyculture.com/North-America/Inughuit-
Orientation.html) clarifies it futher:

> Over the decades, the Inughuit have been renamed a number of times by White
> visitors. "Polar Eskimo," the most common name, was given by Knud Rasmussen
> in 1903. The Inughuit call themselves "the great and real human beings," and
> until White contact in 1818, they believed that they were the only humans in
> the world. "Thule Inuit" is a misnomer, as it refers to the prehistoric
> culture antecedent to all current Inuit groups.

Do note that this is a small number of the most northern Inuit of Greenland.
With your clarification, I think your original 'Inuit communities in Canada'
is better stated as 'a few Inuit communities in Greenland'.

And again, most _but not all_ of the Greenland iron came from the meteorites.
Quoting the abstract from
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/10445803929...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/104458039290112U)
:

> Seventy-four iron objects were randomly selected from the archaeological
> items found in Greenland and have been stored in Copenhagen since about
> 1850. The objects consist of knives, ulos (knife used by Eskimo women for
> skinning), and harpoon blades, but also several nonworked fragments and some
> “hammerstones” were included. The objects were subjected to microscopical
> examination and x-ray microanalysis to determine their nature and mode of
> fabrication. The objects may be sorted into three groups. The majority of
> tools found north of Melville Bay were produced from small fragments of the
> Cape York iron meteorite shower that fell near Savigsivik over 2000 years
> ago. Half of the objects found in the Disko Bay area may be traced to
> occurrences of iron-bearing basalt, while the other half were produced from
> wrought iron. Some of these wrought-iron tools originated at Norse
> settlements and were apparently carried as far north as 77° by Norse ships
> as early as the 12th Century. Other wrought-iron tools were introduced by
> whalers, mainly of Dutch, Spanish and British origin, after about a.d. 1575.
> Some tools may derive from iron nails and hoops from wrecked ships. No signs
> of indigenous iron production have been detected.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://medium.com/@johnhawks/did-humans-approach-the-
southe...](https://medium.com/@johnhawks/did-humans-approach-the-southern-tip-
of-south-america-more-than-18-000-years-ago-a97414475718#.cw6ae5w1m), which
points to this.

~~~
duaneb
Many thanks.

