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Prehistory of Alaska
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Prehistoric Alaska begins with Paleolithic people moving into northwestern North America sometime between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago across the Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska; a date less than 20,000 years ago is most likely.[1] They found their passage blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a temporary recession in the Wisconsin glaciation (the last ice age) opened up an ice-free corridor through northwestern Canada, possibly allowing bands to fan out throughout the rest of the continent. Eventually, Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Trade with both Asia and southern tribes was active even before the advent of Europeans.[2][3][4]
Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups: the Southeastern Coastal Native Americans (the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian), the Athabascans, the Aleut, the two groups of Eskimos, and Inupiat and Yup'ik.