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leaving the remainder to father the children (among the Dani, again, 29
     per cent of men were observed to be killed by warfare). 13
    Among the consequences of such limited genetic diversity would have been the
     fact that the pace of evolution in the New World would have been slowed in comparison
     with that in the Old; and it would also have made New World peoples more susceptible to
     diseases introduced from outside.
     
    S LEDS AND S EAWEED
    The archaeological evidence for an entry into the New World from
     Siberia is supported by the great similarity of sites either side of the Bering Strait.
     A group of locations nearest to the Strait in Siberia was christened (in 1967) by Yuri
     Mochanov, a Russian archaeologist from the Scientific Research Institute at Yakutsk, as
     the ‘Dyukhtai culture’, after a site on the Aldan River, which flows north
     into the Laptev Sea, on the fringes of the Arctic Ocean. Here, mammoth and musk-ox
     remains were excavated, associated with spear and arrow points flaked on both sides, as
     well as blades and wedge- and disc-shaped cores – in other words, a distinctive
     upper Palaeolithic culture, dated to between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago. Other sites,
     with bifacial tools and blades and even knives, have since been found in the area,
     together with bone and ivory artefacts. Nothing older than 18,000 years has been
     unearthed, and the bulk of remains are later. The northern-most site of the Dyukhtai
     culture is found at Berelekh, near the mouth of the Indigirka River, on the northern
     shore of Siberia.
    Just as early people appear to have ‘beachcombed’ their way
     around the south-east coast of Eurasia, to reach China, so they may have beachcombed
     east from Berelekh along the Arctic Ocean coast of Siberia until they reached the Bering
     Strait – except that it was then land. Some palaeontologists, like Dale Guthrie,
     emeritus professor at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska,
     believe that the Dyukhtai microblades were intended to be slotted into antler points as
     weapons. If so, this could complicate matters, suggesting that this technique, which is
     also found in North America, was not so much learned or copied by ‘New
     World’ people from ‘Old World’ people, as a rational adaptation to
     an environment where reindeer were abundant. In other words, it is not in itself
     evidence of migration.
    But the fact remains that there are several other cultural similarities
     between the Dyukhtai complex in Siberia and sites found in Alaska. Both cultures, it
     should be said, are terrestrial cultures, which do not feature sailing among their
     skills, suggesting that these early peoples at least crossed Beringia on foot, rather
     than by canoe or something similar. (One interesting observation that may be more than a
     sideeffect is that the burial of a domesticated dog was recorded at a site in Ushki, on
     the Kamchatka Peninsula, dated to 11,000 years ago. Given that, even today, it is easier
     to move around in the Arctic Circle on foot during winter, with its hard frozen
     surfaces, than in summer, with its soggy, marshy landscape, this discovery takes on a
     significance it might otherwise lack.)
    The several prehistoric sites that have been discovered in Alaska show a
     complicated picture but one that does not necessarily negate the scenario given above.
     As Brian Fagan says, in his The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America ,
     ‘Despite years of patient endeavour, no one has yet found an archaeological site
     in Alaska and the Yukon that can be securely dated to earlier than about 15,000 years
     ago.’ 14 A caribou tibia was found at the Old Crow site,
     close to the Alaskan-Canadian border, which had undoubtedly been fashioned by human
     hands into a ‘fleshing tool’, for removing flesh from hide. To begin with,
     this and related bones were dated to about 27,000 years ago, but were later revised to
     only 1,300 years