Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
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Edited by Eske Willerslev, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, and approved August 19, 2015 (received for review May 18, 2015)
Significance
Fish bones from the 11,500-y-old Upward Sun River site in interior Alaska represent the oldest evidence for salmon fishing in North America. We used ancient DNA analysis to identify the fish specimens as chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), and stable isotope analysis to confirm that the salmon were anadromous (sea-run). The exploitation of salmon at this early date is noteworthy because Paleoindians are traditionally portrayed as big-game hunting specialists. Furthermore, the presence of salmon at Upward Sun River over 1,400 km upriver from the coast shows that spawning runs had been established by the end of the last Ice Age. The early availability and use of anadromous salmon has important implications for understanding Paleoindian economies and expansion into North America.
Abstract
Salmon represented a critical resource for prehistoric foragers along the North Pacific Rim, and continue to be economically and culturally important; however, the origins of salmon exploitation remain unresolved. Here we report 11,500-y-old salmon associated with a cooking hearth and human burials from the Upward Sun River Site, near the modern extreme edge of salmon habitat in central Alaska. This represents the earliest known human use of salmon in North America. Ancient DNA analyses establish the species as Oncorhynchus keta (chum salmon), and stable isotope analyses indicate anadromy, suggesting that salmon runs were established by at least the terminal Pleistocene. The early use of this resource has important implications for Paleoindian land use, economy, and expansions into northwest North America.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: cmhalffman{at}alaska.edu.
Author contributions: C.M.H., B.A.P., and B.M.K. designed research; C.M.H., B.A.P., H.J.M., B.P.F., A.T.R., D.Y.Y., and B.M.K. performed research; C.M.H., B.A.P., H.J.M., B.P.F., A.T.R., D.Y.Y., and B.M.K. analyzed data; and C.M.H., B.A.P., H.J.M., B.P.F., A.T.R., D.Y.Y., and B.M.K. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. KT693031, KT693032, KT725810, and KT725811).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1509747112/-/DCSupplemental.
Early human use of salmon in North America
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