4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?

Archaeological evidence from one of the High Arctic’s most dangerous marine environments reveals that the region’s earliest inhabitants were expert seafarers who undertook perilous open-ocean journeys

An Inuit hunter pursues a walrus from a skin-covered kayak in a historical illustration. Lightweight, seal-skin watercraft like these were a foundation of Arctic life, enabling hunters to travel, hunt and survive across some of the most dangerous waters on the planet.

Published: February 17, 2026 at 4:03 PM

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Archaeologists have repeatedly underestimated the seafaring abilities of prehistoric peoples.

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From the maritime traditions of Polynesia to the first crossings into the landmass known as Sahul – the prehistoric continent that once connected Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania – over 60,000 years ago, claims of early ocean travel have often been met with raised eyebrows.

After all, it can be difficult to imagine how these humans crossed vast spans of dangerous water with such limited technology.

The prehistoric people who inhabited the Arctic have been no exception to this scepticism. Archaeologists refer to these early Arctic inhabitants as Early Paleo-Inuit: small and mobile hunting communities who lived across northern Greenland and Arctic Canada between roughly 4,500 and 2,800 years ago. For much of the 20th century, archaeologists assumed these communities were a land-based people, edging into frozen landscapes as ice sheets retreated, opening up new inland routes, rather than venturing across open water.

This view was shaped in part by the scarcity of evidence for boats and marine hunting technology, because organic materials such as boats, paddles and skins rarely survive in the archaeological record.

This lack of preservation is still a problem faced by archaeologists today. As a result, the true extent of prehistoric maritime activity in the Arctic – and across the globe – has long remained uncertain.

But a new discovery from northern Greenland is now challenging this long-standing view, providing the strongest evidence yet for something some Arctic specialists have long suspected.

How the Early Paleo-Inuit reached northern Greenland

In the far north of Greenland, beyond the limits of permanent modern settlement, sits a small archipelago called Kitsissut. More than 700 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, this cluster of islands sits at a similar latitude to Norway’s Svalbard; one of the coldest and most ice-bound places on Earth. Reaching these islands by water is still a risk today, due to perilous currents and extreme weather conditions.

Cold, open water separates the Kitsissut archipelago from the Greenland mainland. Even today, crossing this stretch of Arctic sea is hazardous — yet archaeological evidence suggests Early Paleo-Inuit communities were making journeys of more than 50 kilometres here nearly 4,500 years ago.

Cold, open water separates the Kitsissut archipelago from the Greenland mainland. Even today, crossing this stretch of Arctic sea is hazardous — yet archaeological evidence suggests Early Paleo-Inuit communities were making journeys of more than 50 kilometres here nearly 4,500 years ago. (Photo by Antiquity, Matthew Walls, Mari Kleist and Pauline Knudsen)

However, new archaeological research published in the journal Antiquity shows that almost 4,500 years ago – in the early Bronze Age, when the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt was still at the height of its power – ancestors of modern Inuit populations were making this journey using nothing more than small boats constructed from animal skins stretched over lightweight timber frames.

The discovery challenges long-standing assumptions about how the Arctic was first inhabited. The region’s earliest peoples now appear to have been highly skilled seafarers, capable of repeated long-distance open-water voyages.

Reaching Kitsissut from the nearest known Early Paleo-Inuit settlement would have required an extraordinarily risky journey of more than 50 kilometres across open water. According to the researchers, this is the longest sea journey that can be confidently inferred for this period anywhere in the Arctic.

“That’s an extraordinary voyage in small skin-on-frame watercraft,” says Matthew Walls, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at the University of Calgary. “It would have required facing erratic weather, strong crosswinds, powerful currents and very high risk of being swept into the expanse of Baffin Bay.”

Why did the Early Paleo-Inuit head for Kitsissut?

But the question is not just how these people reached Kitsissut, but rather what could have drawn these people so far north, into such treacherous places.

The answer can be found in the Kitsissut islands’ location within Pikialasorsuaq, also known as the North Water polynya – a vast stretch of ocean between northern Greenland and Canada that remains ice-free even during the harsh Arctic winter. Polynyas form when ocean currents, winds and temperature differences prevent sea ice from forming despite sub-zero conditions. They are rare zones of open water amid otherwise frozen seas.

An archaeological field camp sits below the steep nesting cliffs of thick-billed murres on Isbjørne Island. Such seabird colonies, sustained by the nearby North Water polynya, would have provided a dense and predictable food source for Early Paleo-Inuit visitors.

An archaeological field camp sits below the steep nesting cliffs of thick-billed murres on Isbjørne Island. Such seabird colonies, sustained by the nearby North Water polynya, would have provided a dense and predictable food source for Early Paleo-Inuit visitors. (Photo by Antiquity, Matthew Walls, Mari Kleist and Pauline Knudsen)

Unsurprisingly, polynyas are ecological hotspots. They provide refuge for huge numbers of fish and marine mammals, as well as vast seabird colonies – a rare concentration of food in an otherwise extremely challenging environment.

Commenting on the news to HistoryExtra, Professor Robert W Park, a specialist in Arctic archaeology at the University of Waterloo, explains that the seasonal importance of polynyas to Inuit communities would have been critical, especially in the coldest months. “During the cold part of the Arctic year, prey species need access to open water, and the polynya is the only place that stays open,” he says. “Every other part of the ocean is completely frozen.”

As a result, resources become highly concentrated around polynyas in winter and spring. “That’s when people would be there,” Park adds, “not during the summer, when resources are widely distributed across the land and ocean, and when there are long stretches of open water.”

But the same forces that make polynyas rich in wildlife also make them exceptionally dangerous to cross. Navigating these zones would have meant accepting the risks posed by freezing water temperatures and drifting sea ice capable of crushing small boats.

For all the danger, Park notes that these journeys may not always have involved crossing uninterrupted stretches of open water. Instead, boats may have been used “not to traverse 50 kilometres of open water, but rather to travel and hunt in the patches of open water (called ‘leads’) between broken ice, [with people] hauling their boats up onto the ice when the leads close.”

The archaeological evidence of repeated Arctic voyages

No matter how far the open water crossings were, the evidence makes it clear that Kitsissut wasn’t reached by chance – for example, by a lone boat knocked off course.

Instead, generations of people returned to the islands again and again, over many centuries.

These conclusions are based on an extensive archaeological survey conducted on the central islands of the archipelago. Researchers documented nearly 300 archaeological features, including Early Paleo-Inuit tent rings and hearths. Tent rings – circles of stones used to anchor skin tents – are among the most common structural traces left by highly mobile Arctic cultures.

Stone tent rings — circles once used to anchor skin tents against Arctic winds — remain scattered across raised beach ridges in Kitsissut. Despite their modest appearance, such features reveal generations of repeated seasonal visits.

Stone tent rings — circles once used to anchor skin tents against Arctic winds — remain scattered across raised beach ridges in Kitsissut. Despite their modest appearance, such features reveal generations of repeated seasonal visits. (Photo by Antiquity, Matthew Walls, Mari Kleist and Pauline Knudsen)

Many of these features cluster beneath towering seabird cliffs, where thick-billed murres nest by the thousands, creating a rich and predictable food source.

Radiocarbon dating of seabird bone recovered from one dwelling places human activity at the site between roughly 4,400 and 3,900 years ago, coinciding with the early formation of the polynya itself. This overlap suggests that human movement into the region occurred as this emerging ecological system became stable enough to support dense wildlife populations – highlighting the depth of Early Paleo-Inuit environmental knowledge.

“The fact that these early communities made this journey regularly, transporting families and supplies to access seasonal resources like seabird colonies at the islands, demonstrates a level of maritime skill that reshapes our understanding of this period,” Walls says.

As he adds, “reaching Kitsissut required skills that would have been a defining part of social life, passed down and refined as each generation re-learned by going out into the sea to travel and hunt.”

Arctic seafaring in a global context

This discovery fits within a broader pattern of archaeology’s long struggle to accurately capture early sea travel. Comparable distances once seemed implausible in other prehistoric contexts as well. Archaeological estimates of Polynesian voyaging ranges, for example, were routinely underestimated until experimental archaeology and indigenous knowledge demonstrated the true capabilities of early sea vessels.

Speaking to HistoryExtra, Professor Sue Hamilton, former director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, says that any comparisons between the Early Paleo-Inuit and Polynesian ocean crossings “are too separated in time, place, and environmental context to compare” – other than in terms of “the vastness of their ocean contexts.”

She explains that “the Polynesians travelled vast distances across the Pacific in double hulled canoes, using complex navigational observations relying on the stars, ocean swells, bird flights, and wind patterns.” These journeys involved crossing up to 300 kilometres of open ocean for up to three weeks, often against prevailing winds.

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However, what does link the significance of the new research to this broader pattern, Hamilton says, is that in each case “watercraft had a central role in subsistence, social and ecological structure and survival.”

Authors

James OsborneSenior content producer

James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra

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