The Inuit, otherwise known as Eskimo, are an aboriginal people who have made their home in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Siberia and North America, more specifically around Canada (Greenland); United States (Alaska); Aleutian Islands; Russia (Siberia). The word "Eskimo" was given upon resourceful hunters by their neighbors, the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada. It means "eaters of raw meat." However, it has recently begun to be replaced by the Eskimos' own name for themselves, "Inuit," which means, "real people." The Inuit people descended from whale hunters who migrated from Alaska to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic around 1000 AD. Major changes in Inuit life and culture occurred during the Little Ice Age (1600-1850), when the climate in their homelands became even colder. European whalers who arrived in the latter part of the nineteenth century had a strong impact on the Inuit because they carried over infectious diseases that largely reduced the Inuit population. The Inuit people mainly live along the far northern seacoasts of Russia, the United States, Canada, and Greenland. There are more than 100,000 Inuit, most of whom live south of the Arctic Circle, and the majority, which is about 46,000, live in Greenland. There are approximately 30,000 on the Aleutian Islands and in Alaska, 25,000 in Canada, and 1,500 in Siberia. The Inuit homeland is one of the regions of the world least hospitable to human habitation because the majority of the land is flat, infertile tundra where only the top few inches of the frozen earth defrost during the summer months.