Ancient humans in Eurasian arctic ecosystems: Environmental dynamics and changing subsistence
Vladimir V. Pitul'ko
The history of northern peoples (as of all others) is, in general, a history of adaptations. In the Arctic, it begins around 15–16,000 BP or earlier, when Late Paleolithic mammoth hunters occupied Northeast Asia. This area was populated early because it remained ice free during the last glacia‐tion. The rest of the Eurasian Arctic was populated no later than the Early Holocene. Successful adaptations based on hunting animals of the ‘mammoth complex’ remained possible but precarious for most of the region; reindeer economies are more important from the beginning of the Holocene. There were two zones of successful maritime adaptation in two different areas. That in the east occurred later but was much more successful, while that in the west Eurasian Arctic originated earlier and declined in the first millennium ad.