Coastal Greenland seen from the air.
Coastal Greenland from the air, June 2013.

The world saw a number of important innovations 4,500 years ago. In the Nile Valley, ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids at Giza. On the Salisbury Plain, Britons erected Stonehenge. And in the Arctic, Paleo-Inuit people crossed treacherous waters on skin-on-frame boats to access remote islands off the coast of Greenland.

In a study published on Feb. 9 in the academic journal Antiquity, titled Voyage to Kitsissut: a new perspective on Early Paleo-Inuit watercraft and maritime lifeways at a High Arctic polynya, lead author Matthew Walls, Ph.D., from the University of Calgary reported on an archaeological survey of the remote Kitsissut island cluster. Walls was joined on the paper by co-authors Mari Kleist and Pauline Knudsen, also with Calgary.

The Kitsissut Islands are located between Canada’s Ellesmere Island (Umimmattooq) and the northwest coast of Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat). During an archaeological survey in 2019, the archaeologists and their local Inughuit partners discovered a number of “Early Paleo-Inuit features” on Isbjørne Island, one of the Kitsissut Islands. These features included stone circle tent rings along with hearth features, similar in style to those seen at other Paleo-Inuit sites.

The team didn’t have to dig to find the tent sites. “We have very slow soil development in the Arctic. You can see everything on the surface, even from thousands of years ago,” Walls explained in an interview with CBS News Alberta. “Just walking over the site, you can see an incredible amount of different things that have been left through time.”

The survey team discovered a bird humerus (upper arm/wing bone) within one of the tent rings. The humerus was identified as belonging to a thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia), a species of seabird that nests in colonies on the islands. The bone was later radiocarbon dated, resulting in a calibrated age of 4,400–3,938 years.

The calibrated carbon date from the wing bone and the style of the tent rings help place the archaeological sites on Isbjorne within the Early Paleo-Inuit period, which archaeologists place at 4,500–2,700 years ago.

Inferences on ancient watercraft and seafaring


The Kitsissut Islands are located within a polynya, which is an area of Arctic water that remains open and free from sea ice. This means that it would not have been possible for humans to travel to the islands over an ice-bridge. Early Paleo-Inuit travelers would have had to make the journey across the dangerous Arctic waters in a boat or kayak.

Crossing the 33 miles (53 kilometers) of water from mainland Greenland to reach the island chain today would be “formidable even for an experienced adventure kayaker, equipped with GPS, current charts and satellite communication/weather reports,” the authors wrote.

Although the team did not find the remains of any boats during their archaeological survey, evidence from other sites indicates that Paleo-Inuit people used “skin-on-frame” watercraft. These vessels were constructed by stretching animal skins out over a wooden frame, similar to later, traditional Inuit watercraft like kayaks and umiaqs (skin boats).

“We knew that they had watercraft […] but we didn’t know the extent of their seafaring abilities and their navigational skill,” Walls told CBS News Alberta. “Evidently they’re able to intercept different types of sea mammals and travel out into the environment [in the Kitsissut Islands] where they can access seabirds that nest in these islands.”