Englishuncovering the secrets of Dene migration
canada goose coats on sale “It seems that all of the Dene were true nomads,” Yakeleya said. “They were not scared to canada goose clearance go around the next corner or go around the next mountain in search of their livelihood in North America.” canada goose coats on sale
Canada Goose Parka Dene language family widespread John Ives is a professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and the executive director of the Institute of Prairie Archaeology. His work as well as the work of his students and colleagues is central to modern understanding of Dene history. Canada Goose Parka
canadian goose jacket Ives points to research showing a http://www.canadagoosesalesus.com Dene language connection as far away as Russian Siberia, where there is a “vocabulary of about 120 words that appear to be shared between the Dene languages and the Ket languages of the Yenisei River in Siberia,” he said. canadian goose jacket
canada goose black friday sale “The structure of the languages and the way verbs are inflected are very similar. So there’s this very strong suspicion that there is this historical connection that goes back deep, deep in time.” canada goose black friday sale
Dene origins ‘one of the big questions’ But linguistic markers are not the only way researchers approach Dene history and origins. candidate at the University of Alberta and a regional archaeologist for Alberta’s Archeological Survey.
uk canada goose outlet Todd Kristensen said the discovery across a large region of tools made from Tertiary Hills Clinker stone challenges any notion that pre contact Northerners lived in isolated pockets. (Courtesy Todd Kristensen) uk canada goose outlet
Canada Goose online Part of Kristensen’s current work is to track the spread of raw materials, and the stone tools made from those materials, across North America. The circulation of those tools can provide clues to the origins and movement of Northern Dene. Canada Goose online
canada goose factory sale “This is one of the big questions,” he said. “A lot of people are interested in the antiquity of Dene people in Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Some people think they buy canada goose jacket moved in around 3,000 years ago, some think Canada Goose Parka they have a much deeper history, [and] some think they canada goose black friday sale have a more recent one.” canada goose factory sale
Kristensen said archeological evidence today doesn’t give the canada goose clearance sale kind of definitive answers to questions of Dene origins in the North many might like Canada Goose Jackets to have, but his work supports the thesis that the people of pre contact canada goose Northern Canada travelled and traded widely. research includes a focus on Tertiary Hills Clinker, a Canada Goose sale unique glassy stone found in Canada Goose Outlet deposits near modern day Tulita.
Canada Goose Jackets Valued for its beauty and tool making attributes, Kristensen said tools made of Clinker have been canada goose deals found at sites across the Northwest Territories, central Alberta and into the Yukon. Canada Goose Jackets
Tertiary Hills Clinker artifacts. Clinker, a kind of glassy stone, is found in a deposit near modern day Tulita, and has been found distributed across more than one million square kilometres of land in the Northwest Territories and Alberta. (Submitted by Todd Kristensen)
canada goose store “So you’ve got this social network that beginning around at least 9,000 years ago encompassed about 1.25 million square kilometres,” he said. canada goose store
cheap canada goose uk This spread of Clinker supports the idea of long distance “intergroup contacts” between Indigenous populations in Alberta and the Mackenzie Valley, and could provide insight into the migration of Dene people southward into Alberta and the American Southwest. cheap canada goose uk
Canada Goose sale Kristensen said this challenges any notion that pre contact Northerners lived in isolated pockets, but instead traveled widely and had extensive social networks that covered “swathes” of the continent. Canada Goose sale
Natural disaster and forced migration, or, the ‘year of two winters’ Documenting the travels of pre contact indigenous populations throughout North America is important, but researchers also want to understand what motivated them to travel in the first place.
Yakeleya points to oral histories passed down through the generations that may provide clues as to why his ancestors traveled, and how the Dene came to settle in the Mackenzie Canada Goose online Valley.
A map showing the distribution of Tertiary Hills Clinker artefacts across more than one million square kilometres of land in Canada. (Submitted by Todd Kristensen)
“There’s a story my granny told my mom, and my mom related to me,” Yakeleya said. “She called it the ‘year of two winters.'”
Yakeleya said the story describes a year when spring didn’t canadian goose jacket give way to summer, but was followed instead by a second winter so severe it forced his ancestors to leave their homes perhaps in Alaska and travel east and south into the Mackenzie Valley, where they settled upon more hospitable ground.
buy canada goose jacket Yakeleya believes that second winter was canada goose store the result of a volcanic eruption that spread a thick layer of ash so widely that it had the effect of introducing winter like conditions where the ground was covered in ashen ‘snow.’ buy canada goose jacket
He says his ancestors may have traveled into mountain ranges in search of safer ground.
Canada Goose Online “They didn’t know how to find the passes to go through them [the mountains] and the story goes the elders said, ‘Let’s just follow the caribou, buy canada goose jacket cheap the caribou will be our guides.’ And they led them into the Mackenzie Valley.” Canada Goose Online
Oral history meets modern science Kristensen said the kind of archeological evidence needed to fully support a cheap Canada Goose thesis like that hasn’t canada goose outlet been uncovered yet, but research does suggest that relatively recent volcanic eruptions did play a part in the migrations of the Dene.
canada goose “There were two eruptions from the same general area,” Kristensen said. “One spread north around 1,800 years ago and the second one spread east around 1,200 years ago. I don’t know if it could have spurred migrations in Alaska, but certainly people think that it did spur some migrations of people from southern Yukon and into the Northwest territories.” canada goose
cheap Canada Goose These eruptions, called the White River Ash event, were centred on Mount Churchill in Alaska, and may have triggered the migration of Northern Dene southward cheap Canada Goose.