At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111114112314.htm … archaeologists have found a bronze buckle made from a cast, in Alaska, in an eskimo house dating back 1000 years. It originated in East Asia, or so the guess is, but the object was much older than the house as a leather attachment has been carbon dated to around AD600. The object suggests it arrived in Alaska by trade and barter – or the eskimos brought it with them when they migrated into Alaska fromSiberia which is thought to have happened 1500 years ago. If so, there is the possibility the bronze buckle originated on the Asian steppe zone and may be older than the leather attachment. The Seward peninsular, where it was found, is a prominent spur of land that abuts the Bering Straits. From our point of view, at SIS, the migration appears to coincide with major movements of people across northern Asia at the same point in time. These include the Huns and the Avars and various tribal movements recorded by the Chinese (see David Keys Catastrophe: an investigation into the origin of the modern world). The period between AD250 and 600 was intermittently wet and cold in NW Europe and we might expect climatic factors or the migration of animals, including marine animals, as one cause of human movement. Other tribes impinging on one's territory would be another, a sort of radiating effect from the northern steppe zone. The initial movements may have been initiated by reduced pasture as a result of cold weather but by driving some tribes outwards, such as the Avars, the impact was then on surrounding tribes – eventually reaching the shores of the Arctic.
The research was actually focussed on the later warm phase of climate, between AD900 and 1400 (or until roughly the Black Death) which witnessed the spread of eskimos across Alaska and northern Canada, no doubt in response to the reduced summer sea ice.
At http://news.yale.edu/2011/11/10/oldest-rock-art-egypt-discovered/ … the story comes from the December issue of Antiquity, but the research was Yale orientated and concerns the re-discovery of petroglyphs on the east bank of the Nile dating back to the Late Pleistocene era. This makes them contemporary with European cave art – what precisely the link between the two geographical regions besides that is unclear. It may be important, but on the other hand, well …