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Abstract FIVE THOUSAND YEARS OF CHANGE: INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HUMANS AND MARINE ANIMALS IN THE BERINGIAN ENVIRONMENT Douglas Causey Recent evidence indicates that the Beringian and North Pacific
regions are undergoing rapid environmental change, with consequent
cascading effects on the biota. At the same time, the collapse of
virtually every major fishery around the world in recent decades
has made it urgent to understand the underlying processes driving
change in marine ecosystems. As our knowledge of ecosystem processes
increases, it is clear that present-day conditions and records are
inadequate to characterize long-term, large-scale ecosystem variability
and function. It is critical therefore to place the present conditions
in Beringian marine ecosystems into a deep temporal context of historical
patterns and to provide a baseline for interpreting local and regional
change. A unique window into the biological history of the Aleutian
Islands is provided by the zooarchaeology of early human sites.
When Europeans entered Beringia in the mid-18th century, the region
had already been occupied by indigenous people for many millennia.
I focus on the paleofauna hunted by early humans in the Beringian
region from the Aleutian Islands in the south to the shores of the
Arctic Ocean north of the Beringian Straits. Over the time scale,
populations of marine birds and several marine mammals were negatively
correlated with temperature and positively correlated with precipitation.
I detected hunter-related depletions of marine animals in populations
breeding in accessible colonies at small scales of space and time,
but widespread or long-term effects were not seen. It is highly
likely that the most significant, large-scale driver for the marine
biota of Beringia is climate, oceanography, and environmental change.
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