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YUKON TERRITORY Yukon History 1 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Copyright 2019 by Arrowwood Holdings Ltd All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying recording or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non commercial uses permitted by copyright law For permission requests write to the publisher ISBN 978 1 989397 23 7 The Great Canadian Adventure Box 4 Arrowwood AB T0L 0B0 www thegreatcanadianadventure ca Proposed Schedule Week 4 Week 1 What is Archeology Dorset Culture The Last Ice Age Megafauna Thule Culture Humans Technology Taltheilei Culture The Stone Age The Denne Week 2 Clovis Culture Week 5 Folsom Culture Northwest Coast Prehistory Early Archaic Culture Codebreaking the Arms Week 3 Late Archaic Culture Old Copper Complex Woodland Culture Movie of the Month For younger children Brother Bear For older children Alpha 2018 Yukon History 2 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

YUKON HISTORY TOPICS TITLE AUTHOR ISBN ASIN The Ice Stone Ages Crazy for gold Frieda Wishinsky 978 1897066935 Early Human DK 978 0756610678 Stone Age DK 978 1465457509 Discovery in the Cave Mark Dubowski 978 0375858932 Usborne Look Inside the Stone Age Wheatley Abigail 978 1409599050 What Was the Ice Age Nico Medina 978 0399543890 Mega Meltdown Jack Tite 978 1499807523 You Wouldn t Want To Be A Mammoth Hunter How to Live Like A Stone Age Hunter John Malam 978 0531163979 Anita Ganeria 978 1467772075 The Stone Age Jerome Martin 978 1409586418 Stone Age Boy Satoshi Kitamura 978 1406312195 Living in a Stone Age Settlement Robin Twiddy 978 1786375483 The Very First Americans Cara Ashrose 978 0448401683 DK Stone Age DK 978 1465457509 A Kids Guide TO Native American History If you Lived with the Indians of the Northwest Coast If you Lived with the Iroquois Yvonne Wakim Dennis 978 1556528026 Anna Kamma 978 0439260770 Ellen Levine 978 0590674454 If You Lived with the Sioux Indians Ann McGovern 978 1442005938 Nations of the Northwest Coast Kathryn Smithyman 978 0778704706 Nations of the Northeast Coast Molly Aloian 978 0778704782 Nations of the Western Great Lakes Kathryn Smithyman 978 0778704645 Nations of the Eastern Great Lakes Rebecca Sjonger 978 0778704737 Life in a Plains Camp Bobbie Kalman 978 0778703693 Life in the Far North Bobbie Kalman 978 0778704690 Life in a Longhouse Village Bobbie Kalman 978 0778704621 Life in an Anishinabe Camp Niki Walker 978 0778704652 Native Homes Bobbie Kalman 978 0778704638 The Kids Book of Aboriginal Peoples Diane Silvey 978 1554539307 DK Eyewitness North American Indian Discover the Rich Culture of American Indians David Murdoch 978 0756610814 Aboriginal Peoples of Canada Yukon History 3 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Table of Contents Cover Page for the Yukon Territory p1 Table of Contents p2 What is Archeology p3 The Last Ice Age Megafauna p4 5 Humans Technology p6 7 The Stone Age p8 10 Clovis Culture p11 12 Folsom Culture p16 18 Early Archaic Culture p19 21 Late Archaic Culture Old Copper Complex p22 27 Woodland Culture 28 32 Dorset Culture p33 Thule Culture p38 Taltheilei Culture p40 The Dene p42 Northwest Coast Prehistory p44 Codebreaking the Arms p45 Decorative Paper for Scrapbooking p46 51 Yukon History 4 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Since there are no written records of this time archeology is the study of objects made by humans from that time which they use as clues to learn about how people lived in the past These objects called artifacts can be anything made by humans including clothes dishes and tools and other objects found at their dig sites If an archeologist from 10 000 years in the future were to discover the dig site of your town or neighbourhood what objects might they find Which objects do you think would tell them the most about how we lived g Archaeologists can look at stone tools and pottery to determine what types of activities or work ancient people did Seeds and animals bones left behind can tell archaeologists about what people ate in the past Pieces of fabric or even an old shoe are clues about the types of clothes people wore long ago Archaeologists piece all of these clues together to understand the lives of ancient people just like a detective puts together all of the clues to figure out what happened WHAT IS ARCHEOLOGY An archaeologist is a scientist that studies the history of humans from before writing was invented History before there were written records of people s history is called pre history or and we call the people prehistoric Prehistory ended for the different peoples at different times In fact there are still tribes living in the Amazon jungle that are living in a prehistoric culture because they have not adopted writing and the tools they use are still made of stone Yukon History 5 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

THE LAST ICE AGE MEGAFAUNA The last ice age started about 121 000 years ago and lasted until about 11 300 years ago During this time massive glaciers covered most of the surface of the Earth Mega very large and Fauna animals together mean very large animals Humans and animals lived in the areas not covered by glaciers and were limited to areas in Africa Europe Asia and Australia Megafauna did not mean just animals with fur It also included birds reptiles and amphibians animals with backbones or vertebrates Large parts of North America was covered by the Cordilleran and Laurentian ice sheets There wasn t much plants in the Yukon at the time Only some coniferous trees prairie grasses some lilies orchids and berry bushes The Yukon was cut off from North America by glaciers but was connected to Asia by an exposed land bridge across the Bering Strait This ice free land that stretched from Yukon to Russia is known as Beringia Yukon History 6 In North America the Megafauna included the Woolly Mammoth American Mastodon Steppe Bison Scimitar Cat Giant Beaver Yukon Camel Beringian Lion Short faced bear The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Beringia Land Bridge Cordilleran Ice Sheet Laurentide Ice Sheet Siberian Ice Sheet Scandinavian Ice Sheet A map of how people left Africa and spread across the world between 60 000 and 2000 years ago 6 000 4 000 years ago 3000 2000 years ago 24 000 years ago 17 000 14 000 years ago 14 100 years ago 12 600 years ago 60 000 years ago 14 500 years ago Yukon History 7 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Yukon History 8 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Yukon History 9 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

The word technology means science of craft It means that the tools that humans used shows us what knowledge they had and now they applied it to solve their problems fulfill needs or satisfy wants Just try solving a challenge like making your bed You might be able to come up with many different ideas of tools that could do it for you but could you actually build or make that tool Shaping a tool for cutting or scraping two basic and useful functions is a difficult task Such a tool must be made of a hard material and the hardest material easily available on the surface of the earth is stone But how does one shape a stone without tools W A tool is basically the result of backwards thinking You have to understand your problem and then imagine what the opposite of a problem would look like the solution and then you have to form an idea of what tool could be made to solve that problem It is very complex thinking HUMANS TECHNOLOGY As the glaciers over North America melted small groups of people slowly made their way south even to the most southern tip of South America These peoples lives depended on hunting the giant animals that thrived in the Ice Age Today we know that there were different groups of these people based on the technology they used How many things can you find in your home that would be considered a tool created for a specific purpose Humans are different from other creatures because we have technological ability Some animals do use tools but there is a difference between using a tool and making one for a specific purpose Yukon History 10 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

SIBERIA LAURENTIDE ICE SHEET Migration Route Forests Ice Sheets Prairie Yukon History 11 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

The history of human technology begins with the discovery of how to give stone a cutting edge 2 to 3 million years ago Humans discovered that a rock called flint can be split and chipped to form a sharp edge Tools made in this way have been found in Africa Gradually over thousands of years new and improved techniques were developed for striking off slivers of stone In the earliest periods one single tool is usually made from the core of the flint resulting in an instrument that can be used in a fairly rough manner for either cutting or scraping Hundreds of thousands of years later craftsmen had become skilled at forming the flakes themselves into implements of various kinds producing specialist tools for cutting scraping gouging or boring as well as sharp points for arrow and spear heads These sophisticated stone tools in their turn made it possible to carve materials such as antler or bone to create even sharper points or more complex shapes such as hooks or needles Yukon History 12 THE STONE AGE E U e S M The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Yukon History 13 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Native American culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 13 500 years ago at the end of the last ice age Yukon History 14 U The culture lasted from about 13 000 to 10 900 years BCE Judging from sites on the North American Great Plains the Clovis people were skilled hunters of huge animals especially Ice Age mammoths and mastodons A single animal could provide meat for weeks on end and if dried for much of the winter also Hides tusks bones and pelts were used to make household possessions subsistence tools for shelter even clothing 13 000 10 900 BCE HUNTERS According to the standard accepted theory the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age then made their way southward through an ice free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present day western Canada as the glaciers retreated CULTURE THE MAMMOTH The Clovis people also known as Paleo Indians are generally regarded as the first human inhabitants of North America and ancestors of all the indigenous cultures of North and South America CLOVIS The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Yukon History 15 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Consider the tools you have in your home Would it be easy to pick up your belongings and move after a herd of mastodons Cl ovis t ools w ere hi ghly ef fective lightweight and portable They were very well suited for people who were constantly on the move Their stone technology was based on finegrained roc k They understood the properties of different kinds of rock well and had an excellent ability to find the best sources of flint for their finely crafted points and tools and of ochre for use as a red pigment The most distinctive part of Clovis technology was their fluted rock spear point known as the Clovis point The Clovis point is bifacial has two sides and is fluted on both sides a feature that possibly allowed the point to be mounted onto a spear in a way so that the point would snap off on impact The Clovis People were also botanists and were well versed in the use of plants for food and equipment A new theory Archeological sites has discovered evidence of people inhabiting North America thousands of years before the Clovis were meant to have arrived This has given rise to a new theory that about 18 000 years ago ship fairing hunter gatherers from Asia used the coastline of North America to travel Some traveled South into South America and others spread north meeting the Clovis hunters Evidence of Clovis culture can be found to the eastern coasts of North America and into South America so we know that they kept moving Around 10 500 years ago Clovis abruptly vanish from the archaeological record replaced by a large number of different local hunter gatherer cultures No one is sure why this happened but their disappearance happened at the same time as the mass extinction of Ice Age megafauna It is possible that either Clovis people hunted these mammals into extinction or that the climate changed so much that their food sources disappeared Yukon History 16 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Around 10 800 BCE there was an episode of intense climate warming which resulted in major changes in human settlement and how they lived The great glaciers on North America started melting large lakes dried up and as their resources disappeared people were forced to find living sites near dependable water sources and groups began to settle in places seasonally Even with new technology to be successful and living on bison you have to follow the migration patterns of the herds throughout the plains They were the first groups who practiced a cooperative type of hunting described as surround kill method Yukon History 17 10 500 to 8 000 BCE THE BISON HUNTERS The culture that followed Clovis is known as Folsom Folsom technology developed a weapon point made with a channel flute down the center on one or both sides Folsom points were smaller than Clovis had thinner blades and were lozenge shaped They were not arrow or spear points but were likely attached to darts and delivered by atlatl throwing sticks CULTURE P Clovis people were primarily mammoth hunters but the mammoth had gone extinct People on the Southern Plains started to hunt a new prey bison instead A different technology was required to hunt bison because bison were faster and weighed much less than mammoths and mastodons With the new technology a new culture was born FOLSOM The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

The atlatl a special spear throwing device that greatly increased a spear s thrust and force It was as important a discovery as the gun was for us and it was used over the next several thousand years Yukon History 18 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

By 8 000 BCE the ice sheets that covered much of Canada were already significantly smaller The climate became warmer and drier and the Great Plains were transformed into a to semi desert Droughts reduced water supply and caused the grasslands to expand northwards creating new grazing areas for bison Folsom cultures followed bison herds into newly accessible land areas of the northern and eastern parts of the Great Plains Three distinct cultures developed based on the biomes they lived in E A R L Y ARCHAIC CULTURE 8 000 to 6 000 BCE Do you recognize any of these cultures Can you associate them with nations you have learned about Western Plano cultures developed around hunting bison on the grassy plains of central Canada Many new styles of spear points were developed Summer were spent on Grasslands where groups organised communal hunts using bison jumps This technique involved the stampeding of herds over cliffs The Plano people then moved the wooded and sheltered areas for a final hunt before winter Small animals berries fish and birds were collected for food and other uses such as medicine The Northern Plano cultures hunted caribou instead of bison for subsistence Archeologists believe that each band developed a special permanent relationship with a specific caribou herd following their migration routes Eastern Plano cultures traveled much farther east and would rely on a variety of animals such as moose caribou and small mammals in order to survive until spring as the technology for hunting bison could easily be adapted to other game animals Yukon History 19 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

WESTERN PLANO NORTHERN PLANO Yukon History 20 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

EASTERN PLANO Yukon History 21 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

The main reason for people changing their culture was climate As the climate changed their access to food and water changed and many cultures had to change their lifestyles or technologies to adapt Large game became extinct so they turned to deer bison rabbits fish and birds to survive They added more nuts fruits tubers and berries to their diets How would a change in climate affect the plants and animals that lived in an area How would a change in the plants and animals affect the food hunting techniques tools homes and clothing of a People who lived in rainforests that started to change into desserts b People who lived around lakes which dried up and became grasslands c People who lived in boreal forests which became colder and turned to tundra These big changes that people had to make during this time is known as the Broad Spectrum Revolution The revolutions did not only take place in North America but cultures around the whole world had to adapt to the change of climate and resources Archaic people started developing technology specific to the areas they settled in Those living near coasts developed fish hooks and nets for catching fish Acorns became a reliable food source for forest inhabitants so mortars and pestles were used to grind accords nuts and hard seeds Atlals were adapted into harpoons by for hunting sea mammals like seals walrus and small whales Baskets were essential for gathering and storing edible plants Because Archaic peoples didn t need to travel as far or as often as their ancestors they dug pits for storing food which let them store food for winter Yukon History 22 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019

Yukon History 23 The Great Canadian History Adventure 2019