Ancient People of the Arctic traces the lives of the Palaeo-Eskimos, the bold first explorers of the Arctic. Four thousand years ago, these people entered the far northern extremes of the North American continent, carving a living out of their bleak new homeland.

From the hints they left behind, accessible only through the fragmented archaeological record, Robert McGhee ingeniously reconstructs a picture of this life at the margins. He discusses how the Palaeo-Eskimos spread across the entire Arctic, explains how they dealt with sharp climate changes that drastically altered their environment, offers glimpses into their spiritual practices and world view, and speculates about their eventual demise.

For three thousand years, the Paleo-Eskimos not only successfully adapted to their frozen land but also developed a rich cultural life. Their archaeological sites yield a trove of beautifully crafted tools made from bone, ivory, quartz, and flint. The Dorset culture, the last Palaeo-Eskimo people of the central and eastern Arctic, left an astounding assortment of art objects, preserved by the extreme cold of their environment: a caribou antler carved with images of more than sixty faces, each with a unique and realistic expression; a tiny ivory mask of a serene human face, carvings of bears sitting, prowling, and flying. Fully illustrated with photographs of this art and the landscape in which it was found, Ancient People of the Arctic presents an evocative picture of the first Arctic inhabitants and their adaptation as they moved across a variety of landscapes at the top of the hemisphere.

The Paleo-Eskimos have left far more than the hundreds of pieces of art recovered by archaeologists and the evidence of human ingenuity and endurance on the perimeter of the habitable world. Their most valuable legacy lies in the realization that these two things occurred together and were part of the same phenomenon. They provide an example of lives lived richly and joyfully amid dangers and insecurities that are beyond the imagination of the present world.