Paleo-Eskimo

Meanings

1. The inhabitants and/or native cultures of the North American Arctic region before the rise of the modern Eskimo cultures in the region; the Saqqaq, Independence I and II, and/or Dorset cultures and peoples.

Etymology

From paleo- (“old, primeval”) + Eskimo. The scholar David J. Meltzer writes that the people are "badly named: there is nothing to indicate they are ancestral Eskimo or spoke an Eskimo language; today's Eskimo refer to them as the Tuniit".