Cold United

This 340-year-old bow was reconstructed from several fragments found near melted patches of ice in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories. (Tom Andrews)

Melting ice pockets high in Canada’s Arctic mountains are slowly revealing the habits of caribou hunters over thousands of years as they moved from attacking with spears to bows and arrows — and even set traps to snare smaller snacks while they waited for their main prey.

Since 2005, archeologist Tom Andrews and colleagues have been piecing together how hunters in the area adapted over many generations, studying bits of tools grabbed from melting snowy patches in the remote Mackenzie Mountains in western Northwest Territories along the Yukon boundary.

Mountain boreal caribou have long sought refuge on the cooling patches, escaping annoying bugs and warmer temperatures over the summer months. Over generations, humans learned to hunt them there and have left tools buried deep beneath years and years of winter snow.

Now, said Andrews, the ice patches are slowly receding each year, likely due to global warming, revealing perfectly preserved relics of the past. (more…)