Several ancient artifacts imported from East Asia, more specifically from Korea and China, have been uncovered at the Rising Whale site at Cape Espenberg in Alaska.

Bronze and obsidian artifacts discovered in a dwelling at the Rising Whale site, a 1,000 year-old house in Alaska, reinforce the idea there was a trading relationship between the New World and East Asia 1,000 years ago.

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One of the bronze artifacts might have been used as a buckle or fastener. Preliminary radiocarbon dates indicate it was made around A.D. 600. The second bronze artifact may have been used as a whistle.

Since bronze hadn't yet been developed in Alaska at that time, the items may have been obtained through trade.

"We're seeing the interactions, indirect as they are, with these so-called 'high civilizations' of China, Korea, or Yakutia," said Owen Mason of the University of Colorado.

The new discoveries and other finds over the past 100 years suggest trade and ideas were reaching Alaska from East Asian civilizations well before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492.

There were movements of people from East Asia to the New World around 15,000 years ago. These East Asians crossed a land bridge that had formed across the Bering Strait. That land bridge was swallowed up by the sea 10,000 years ago.

Archaeologists believe the people that lived at the Rising Whale site might belong to the "Birnirk" culture, a group of people that lived on both sides of the Bering Strait.

A recent genetic study indicates people from the Birnirk culture are the ancestors of a people called the "Thule" that spread across the North American arctic as far as Greenland. The Thule are ancestors of the modern-day Inuit, the indigenous people in Alaska

In 1913, anthropologist Berthold Laufer found that the Chinese had a great interest in obtaining ivory from walruses and narwhals. Ancient records said the Chinese acquired this ivory from people that lived to the northeast of China. Some of the walrus ivory might have come from the Bering Strait where the animals are in abundance.