Researchers Find Earliest Evidence of Salmon Fishing
This suggests that Ice Age humans were open to eating more than just mammoths.
Fish was also on the menu for some ancient Alaskans, say scientists. As a resource, salmon continued to gain importance as larger game died out in interior Alaska.
Researchers in Alaska have found the earliest known evidence that Ice Age humans in North America used salmon as a food source. “Combining genetic and isotopic analyses allow us to confirm the identity as chum salmon, which inhabit the area today, as well as establish their life histories”, Ben Potter, another UAF anthropologist, said in the release. “The implications are quite profound”. The study’s findings were published this Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Pleistocene ended 11,700 years ago. The salmon bones are by far the oldest yet found by researchers, trumping the previous record by roughly 5,500 years. “Sea-run” salmon are those who swim almost 900 miles up stream every year from the Pacific Ocean to the fresh waters of the Yukon River. The salmon bones excavated from the Upward Sun River site signify that these fish arose earlier and breeded further north than researchers had theorized. “It also documents that salmon runs were established in the Tanana River at the time”. The foraging population would have moved towards an abundant resource if they knew the salmon were there. The age of the remains made studying them particularly hard , he said: “There are few laboratories in the world that could successfully conduct such a study”.
Knowing that the people were catching salmon at the time indicates to scientists this possibility of migration.
The Upward Sun Site is located near the extreme end of where salmon migrate up this tributary of the Yukon.
According to the study’s co-author, Carrin Halffman from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, “It’s a tantalizing possibility that salmon might have been important”. Native people, who once celebrated the return of salmon with elaborate ceremonies, still net and dry salmon much as they did thousands of years ago. Potter says that the pattern suggests “a mapping onto the environment”. The fish bones are fragile and small. These foragers were likely opportunistic in their food choices.
The same site, as discovered by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, yielded animal bones and human bones. Alaskan salmon abundances are changing and that’s having an economic impact.