Blue beads in the tundra: The first U.S. import from Europe?

[TexasTowelie]

Glass beads made in Venice that archeologists found in northern Alaska.


Glass beads the size of blueberries found by archeologists in a Brooks Range house-pit might be the first European item ever to arrive in North America, predating the arrival of Columbus by a few decades.

Made in Venice, Italy, the tiny blue beads might have travelled more than 10,000 miles in the skin pockets of aboriginal adventurers to reach Bering Strait. There, someone ferried them across the ocean to Alaska.

At least 10 of the beads survived a few centuries in the cold dirt of three locations in northern Alaska. Archeologists recently unraveled the mystery of the beads in a paper published in the journal American Antiquity.

Mike Kunz, one of the authors, is an archeologist with the UA Museum of the North. He retired in 2012 from the Bureau of Land Management after three decades as an expert on ancient people of Alaska north of the Arctic Circle. Working for BLM, he visited Punyik Point several times.

Read more: https://www.anchoragepress.com/news/blue-beads-in-the-tundra-the-first-u-s-import-from-europe/article_5a01fef2-673b-11eb-a4a8-67ae425ff858.html

[wnylib]

1. My guess on the route by which

the beads ended up in Alaska.

Venice and other Mediterranean port cities traded with China via Middle East countries, the Silk Road, and by water, with India.

I'm guessing they reached the Middle East by ship, then to China by the overland Silk Road, or by water via India. In China they were traded to northern regions, maybe in exchange for fur, hides, or walrus tusks from tribal groups. We know from DNA and archaeology that there was a back and forth movement of people between Alaska and northeastern Asia across the Bering Straight. So someone in Northeastern Asia would have carried them on a trip to Alaska.

Another thought occurred to me on how the beads might have reached China, but it would have been a couple centuries earlier, in the 1200s. Could Marco Polo have carried them with him?

[dem in texas]

2. Used to buy in Anchorage gift shop in 1970's

Have bought them as gifts. Sold to me as antique Russian trade beads when we in lived in Anchorage in the 1970's.

[Duppers]

3. WOW!!

K&R

"...predating the arrival of Columbus by a few decades."

History is constantly being rewritten and underscores the question: "Again, why do we celebrate Columbus Day?"
Besides, it's an insult to the indigenous people living on the North American continent* for many centuries.


*And South America for that matter.

[calimary]

4. Oooooh! Beads! Want!

And they’re blue, too!