Prehistoric Coastal Settlements
Human use of the Arctic Sea is known throughout the Holocene (since the last glaciation) and may have also occurred in the Pleistocene. The drowning of Beringia at the end of the last Ice Age, a formative event in the history of the Arctic Ocean, meant the loss of some of the sites of the migrating first populations into North America.
The remaining sites of the Palaeo-Arctic culture are the earliest evidence of a coastal Arctic culture in the western hemisphere in current Alaska since 11,000 BP.Migrating slowly to the east over many centuries there have been human coastal activities. Coastal settlements were rare and likely seasonal in the North American Arctic as part of the so called Small Tools Culture, a common name for the Dorset and Thule Cultures covering the period from c. 4,500 BP up to European contact. Hunting of large mammals was common to provide protein. The population used harpoons and breathing holes for sealing. Dwellings close to the shores went low into the surface in contrast to more permanent inland dwellings which were dug deep for protection. Temporary houses of snow were also built on the sea ice for which snow knives of stone and bone have been preserved. These cultures may also have used boats, both from Canadian and Greenland coasts. They may also have been expanding and retreating with natural climate variation that affected the length of seasonal ice-free conditions.[785]
In the eastern Arctic, current Scandinavia and Russia, coastal communities are likewise known for several thousand years. The Norwegian Komsa culture, in evidence from approximately 12,000 BP, was mainly oriented towards the sea for fishing and sealing.[786] A theory of Stone Age settlements in Svalbard since c. 5000 BP, based on alleged stone tool findings, remains unsupported.[787]