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A more realistic date of 7,500 takes you back before those sources and gives us an idea that stone age folks living in Arctic regions had boats

If they were clinker built and 7500 years old that would imply that boats of some sort pre-existed these by quite a long time. Clinker built boats are something that would have taken a long time to evolve. If we allow several thousand years to go from a log or a skin raft to such a craft then we have to backtrack the receding ice sheets to find where suitable trees were. Perhaps back to sw France, nw Spain, i.e. Solutrean country?

How about North Africa circa 20,000 BC, the very height of the glacial advance. Although we know people were living in the Refugia BEFORE THAT period and AFTER THAT period we don't really know if they were there from about 24,000 years ago to about 18,000 years ago ~ they could have gotten in their little boats and gone to America for all we know, skirting the then advancing great sea ice ice sheet.

Note, that deals with the question of just how far South the sea ice went ~ at the Peak it probably went a long way, but that period was short enough it probably didn't leave us with enough debris to actually detect it on the seabed.

The Australians are telling us folks had real boats 50,000 years ago. My thinking is that folks could make passable dugouts from the time they learned to set fire on demand. That'd be 180,000 years ago ~ maybe more.

Clinkerbuilt boats, though ~ are Post Glacial Advance ~ even 700 BC there were folks using large leather bottomed boats ~ they sailed from Northern Spain to sites in the Mediterranean, and back.

How about North Africa circa 20,000 BC, the very height of the glacial advance. Although we know people were living in the Refugia BEFORE THAT period and AFTER THAT period we don't really know if they were there from about 24,000 years ago to about 18,000 years ago ~ they could have gotten in their little boats and gone to America for all we know, skirting the then advancing great sea ice ice sheet.

Note, that deals with the question of just how far South the sea ice went ~ at the Peak it probably went a long way, but that period was short enough it probably didn't leave us with enough debris to actually detect it on the seabed.

The Australians are telling us folks had real boats 50,000 years ago. My thinking is that folks could make passable dugouts from the time they learned to set fire on demand. That'd be 180,000 years ago ~ maybe more.

Clinkerbuilt boats, though ~ are Post Glacial Advance ~ even 700 BC there were folks using large leather bottomed boats ~ they sailed from Northern Spain to sites in the Mediterranean, and back.

THink of it this way. There was no boat building possible from 14,000 years ago (melt down of the Big ice0 until the first birch trees had time to grow, and to spread. Some botanist has the information on that but I'd guess it took at least 100 years for the birches to spread North from France all the way to the Arctic Circle (winds blow those seeds a long way ~ that's why they have a "wing').

So, right off the bat the first people into the Arctic would have had just about the easiest to use wood on Earth. You could make splits for weaving baskets, larger splints for snowshoes, even larger splints for skis, and if you can make skis you can make planks and frames, and if you can do that you have your basic Sa'ami civilization ~ explaining several reasons it was highly successful in one of the world's worst climates.

Baskets, snowshoes, skis, boats ~ it's all there, and right on the heels of the big meltdown.