Environmental change and impacts on ancient human colonization of Peary Land, northernmost Greenland (2022-2026)

Seventy-five years ago, on the northeastern coast of Greenland, the Danish Pearyland Expedition led by archaeologist Count Eigil Knuth discovered the frame of an abandoned ~11 m (meters) whaleboat on a gravel terrace above the sea ice. Built largely from driftwood and fastened with walrus-ivory pegs, the vessel was constructed in the style of an umiak, the skin-covered boats still used in northern Alaska. Nearby camp remains date the occupation to around 1450 CE (Common Era). Artifacts indicate that the occupants arrived not from southern Greenland but from the north and west, implying a traversal of Greenland’s northernmost coast—a region long considered impassable. If Inuit whalers reached northeastern Greenland by circumnavigating the north coast, environmental conditions must have differed markedly from those of the recent past, with sufficiently extensive summer open water to sustain migrating whales from Baffin Bay and Smith Sound and to permit their pursuit by Thule hunters. This project used the MITgcm to study the sensitivity of sea ice along the north coast of Greenland to climate change.