Ultramarine: the science of our oceans and waterways
Mar 12, 2026 · 16 min · 10 segments
Four and a half thousand years ago, people were already navigating the dangerous waters of the High Arctic. In this episode of the ConnectSci Podcast Ultramarine series, David Boldeman speaks with…
Evrim YazginGuest
David BoldemanHost
so again with ecosystems and humanity, I think we can sometimes get caught in the trap of the natural ecosystem, the natural environment is over here and what humanity does is over here with the negatives of climate change and pollution.
But there's this kind of intermediate space where I think our ancestors in particular filled that space where humanity played a role in the ecosystems, which wasn't necessarily a negative one, but one which led to changing or development of certain places.
So what this study looks at is how this was done not in the sort of lush forests of the tropics not in the the temperate wilderness of europe or other parts of the world but in some of the harshest environments on earth and again we're not talking a couple of hundred years ago four and a half thousand years ago i mean it's just mind-blowing i think
so tell us the core finding that just shifts them to like what are they what have they found what have they seen
These researchers looked at specific island groups in the Arctic Ocean, in the high Arctic, where, as you said, you didn't have sort of a couple of stragglers who ended up there by accident and sort of did their thing for a couple of years before drifting off to sea.
You had a thriving community which lasted hundreds, up to 2,000 years, and they were living off the marine environment in a way that challenges our understanding of what people were able to do this far back in such an extreme environment and were actually developing or changing the ecosystem that they were interacting with.
so again with ecosystems and humanity, I think we can sometimes get caught in the trap of the natural ecosystem, the natural environment is over here and what humanity does is over here with the negatives of climate change and pollution.
But there's this kind of intermediate space where I think our ancestors in particular filled that space where humanity played a role in the ecosystems, which wasn't necessarily a negative one, but one which led to changing or development of certain places.
So what this study looks at is how this was done not in the sort of lush forests of the tropics not in the the temperate wilderness of europe or other parts of the world but in some of the harshest environments on earth and again we're not talking a couple of hundred years ago four and a half thousand years ago i mean it's just mind-blowing i think
so tell us the core finding that just shifts them to like what are they what have they found what have they seen
These researchers looked at specific island groups in the Arctic Ocean, in the high Arctic, where, as you said, you didn't have sort of a couple of stragglers who ended up there by accident and sort of did their thing for a couple of years before drifting off to sea.
You had a thriving community which lasted hundreds, up to 2,000 years, and they were living off the marine environment in a way that challenges our understanding of what people were able to do this far back in such an extreme environment and were actually developing or changing the ecosystem that they were interacting with.
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