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Marco Polo (1254-1324), who was on a Venetian trading expedition to China in the late 13th Century, related accounts from other traders that certainly sound lik

Marco Polo (1254-1324), who was on a Venetian trading expedition to China in the late 13th Century, related accounts from other traders that certainly sound like they were in contact with Arctic peoples, e.g, stories of "immense white bears" and "sledges" that were drawn across the ice by teams of dogs. So if the Polo family (and others) were trading Venetian goods into China, and other traders were trading Chinese goods into the Arctic, it's not really too surprising that some of those Venetian trade goods wound up in Alaska. It's very cool that they've found physical evidence though! Edit: This part: "A growing body of evidence from the Bering Strait region indicates that the movement of non-native materials from northeast Asia to northwest Alaska has been occurring via undefined routes since the first millennium AD, if not longer." ignores the fact that Native Alaskan and Siberian peoples were regularly crossing the Bering Strait long before Europeans arrived on the scene. Not only did they have excellent boats (good enough to hunt whales!) but in the winter you could just travel across the ice. There's not really much of a mystery here about how trade goods could have flowed. The same is true of the popular "land bridge" story, by the way. While a temporary land bridge may well have had some influence on the population of the Americas, the fact remains that indigenous peoples were perfectly capable of crossing the Bering Strait. Before the Cold War intervened, many Alaska Natives had family in Siberia, and vice versa. No land bridge needed.

fogihujy 6y ago
Yeah, the physical evidence is the cool part; we know people went from A to B even back in those days, but this show just how massive the ancient trade networks were.
chmod775 6y ago
>Before the Cold War intervened, many Alaska Natives had family in Siberia, and vice versa. No land bridge needed. You lost me on this sentence. How is Alaska Natives having family across pond in modern times related to land bridges 2000 years ago and what did the Cold War do to those families? I just don't understand. What am I missing?
- throwanem 6y ago
  Not OP, but your quote directly follows this: > While a temporary land bridge may well have had some influence on the population of the Americas, the fact remains that indigenous peoples were perfectly capable of crossing the Bering Strait. Crossing in boats, that is, not via land bridge. One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion (especially of espionage on the part of the other) between the two powers whose territories it involves.
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    > One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion Exactly so. While there's reluctance to admit it (even now) there are stories that some Alaska Natives maintained contact with their friends and relatives in Siberia, even during the Cold War. I can certainly believe it. There's a lot of lonely coastline in that area, and not much monitoring -- certainly not back then. But yeah, the main thrust of what I was saying was that the indigenous people had boats capable of making the crossing long before Europeans arrived on the scene, so the "land bridge" idea is not the pat explanation that many seem to think it is. The "land bridge" may have existed, and was probably used when it did exist, but it's clearly not the whole story. We know that Alaska Natives were making this trip, and even longer ones, regularly before the arrival of Europeans. Heck, the Tlingit in Southeast Alaska were running water-based slave raids as far afield as California before the Europeans arrived.
    - roywiggins 6y ago
      There's even a special visa waiver for people with family across the Bering Strait: "the program allows indigenous residents from both sides of the Bering Strait to visit for up to 90 days without a visa. Travelers must have documented invitations from family or other residents living on the other side." https://apnews.com/article/5e16cfadd90c478d80a374ef1cd99c2d https://apnews.com/article/5e16cfadd90c478d80a374ef1cd99c2d
throwaway2048 6y ago
There is a long standing stance in anthropology and archeology that native peoples of the Americas had virtually zero contact with groups outside of their immediate surroundings. I find it extremely condescending and stupid.
- konjin 6y ago
  The reason for this is that when they did have contact they all died. The natives in America were vastly more inbread (which really is saying something) than the Europeans who came in. They had so little genetic diversity that when one died to say small pox they all would then be susceptible to the same strain. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15485351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15485351/
  - AlotOfReading 6y ago
    That's not inbreeding, that's founder effects. Europe and Asia have the same issue compared to Africa, which is why Native Americans have an exceptionally severe case of it. Secondly, your characterization here shows a really fundamental misunderstanding of the literature. To quote an actually relevant paper [1]: > The difficulty of finding incontrovertible evidence to support genetic hypotheses has resulted in a variety of alternative perspectives which de-emphasize the genetic hypotheses as missing key points. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/srep14032 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep14032
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      >That's not inbreeding, that's founder effects Isn't this a simple matter of WHAT versus WHY (i.e. they were inbred because of founder effects)
      - AlotOfReading 6y ago
        No, founder effects are basically sampling bias. You can still have people that are genetically distant reproducing (and in fact, the popularizer of this particular vein of theories in Brazil, Francis Black suggested mandating exactly this to much criticism), but the overall population diversity will remain low. However, founder effects can be associated with inbreeding if it's a sufficiently small population. I'd imagine this probably wasn't a major factor for early Americans, as the effective population size (note, not actual population size!) was on the order of thousands.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
This is a great point. There's a sadly consistent theme of simply underestimating native peoples throughout history. Polynesians were in contact with south America for centuries before Columbus for example. Their naval technology was capable of reliable navigation over vast distances in the pacific. There's genetic evidence that people went back and forth between SA and Oceania with some regularity, a feat more impressive than crossing the Atlantic, but you almost never hear it talked about.
- dangerbird2 6y ago
  Not just generic evidence: Polynesian peoples almost certainly imported sweet potatoes to Oceania and east Asia hundreds of years prior to Columbus. In fact, the proto-Polynesian word for sweet potato is likely a Quechua loan word

fogihujy 6y ago

Yeah, the physical evidence is the cool part; we know people went from A to B even back in those days, but this show just how massive the ancient trade networks were.

chmod775 6y ago

>Before the Cold War intervened, many Alaska Natives had family in Siberia, and vice versa. No land bridge needed. You lost me on this sentence. How is Alaska Natives having family across pond in modern times related to land bridges 2000 years ago and what did the Cold War do to those families? I just don't understand. What am I missing?

throwanem 6y ago
Not OP, but your quote directly follows this: > While a temporary land bridge may well have had some influence on the population of the Americas, the fact remains that indigenous peoples were perfectly capable of crossing the Bering Strait. Crossing in boats, that is, not via land bridge. One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion (especially of espionage on the part of the other) between the two powers whose territories it involves.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  > One assumes the Cold War made this crossing no more physically difficult, but politically impossible due to the mutual suspicion Exactly so. While there's reluctance to admit it (even now) there are stories that some Alaska Natives maintained contact with their friends and relatives in Siberia, even during the Cold War. I can certainly believe it. There's a lot of lonely coastline in that area, and not much monitoring -- certainly not back then. But yeah, the main thrust of what I was saying was that the indigenous people had boats capable of making the crossing long before Europeans arrived on the scene, so the "land bridge" idea is not the pat explanation that many seem to think it is. The "land bridge" may have existed, and was probably used when it did exist, but it's clearly not the whole story. We know that Alaska Natives were making this trip, and even longer ones, regularly before the arrival of Europeans. Heck, the Tlingit in Southeast Alaska were running water-based slave raids as far afield as California before the Europeans arrived.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    There's even a special visa waiver for people with family across the Bering Strait: "the program allows indigenous residents from both sides of the Bering Strait to visit for up to 90 days without a visa. Travelers must have documented invitations from family or other residents living on the other side." https://apnews.com/article/5e16cfadd90c478d80a374ef1cd99c2d https://apnews.com/article/5e16cfadd90c478d80a374ef1cd99c2d

throwaway2048 6y ago

There is a long standing stance in anthropology and archeology that native peoples of the Americas had virtually zero contact with groups outside of their immediate surroundings. I find it extremely condescending and stupid.

konjin 6y ago
The reason for this is that when they did have contact they all died. The natives in America were vastly more inbread (which really is saying something) than the Europeans who came in. They had so little genetic diversity that when one died to say small pox they all would then be susceptible to the same strain. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15485351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15485351/
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  That's not inbreeding, that's founder effects. Europe and Asia have the same issue compared to Africa, which is why Native Americans have an exceptionally severe case of it. Secondly, your characterization here shows a really fundamental misunderstanding of the literature. To quote an actually relevant paper [1]: > The difficulty of finding incontrovertible evidence to support genetic hypotheses has resulted in a variety of alternative perspectives which de-emphasize the genetic hypotheses as missing key points. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/srep14032 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep14032
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    >That's not inbreeding, that's founder effects Isn't this a simple matter of WHAT versus WHY (i.e. they were inbred because of founder effects)
    - AlotOfReading 6y ago
      No, founder effects are basically sampling bias. You can still have people that are genetically distant reproducing (and in fact, the popularizer of this particular vein of theories in Brazil, Francis Black suggested mandating exactly this to much criticism), but the overall population diversity will remain low. However, founder effects can be associated with inbreeding if it's a sufficiently small population. I'd imagine this probably wasn't a major factor for early Americans, as the effective population size (note, not actual population size!) was on the order of thousands.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

This is a great point. There's a sadly consistent theme of simply underestimating native peoples throughout history. Polynesians were in contact with south America for centuries before Columbus for example. Their naval technology was capable of reliable navigation over vast distances in the pacific. There's genetic evidence that people went back and forth between SA and Oceania with some regularity, a feat more impressive than crossing the Atlantic, but you almost never hear it talked about.

dangerbird2 6y ago
Not just generic evidence: Polynesian peoples almost certainly imported sweet potatoes to Oceania and east Asia hundreds of years prior to Columbus. In fact, the proto-Polynesian word for sweet potato is likely a Quechua loan word