The latter, through susceptibility to Eurasian diseases, conflict with neighboring native groups,[1] and malnourishment after European persecution pushed them inland and away from the fish and marine mammals that had been a staple of their diet, succumbed to erosion of their population base, which was small to begin with, and disappeared in the 19th century as a distinct tribe.
[2] Archaeogenetic research in 2017 established, however, that the Maritime Archaic people had nothing genetically in common with the Inuit, nor with the Beothuk, who later inhabited the same area after the climatic conditions changed.
[2] A study published in Current Biology compared the mitochondrial DNA of 74 individuals, 19 Beothuk, 53 Maritime Archaic, and two Paleo-Eskimo, and found that these populations were not at all related.
[3] Another significant Maritime Archaic find are the "Red Ochre Culture" burials throughout the Northeast United States (their attribution to MA is not generally accepted).
If the hypothesis of the Red Ochre as the last state of the Maritime Archaic period is accepted, then the latter is best known from a mortuary site in Newfoundland at Port au Choix.