Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule

[fasquardon]

OK, well, I've read this whole thread in a couple days. So I have alot of comments to make.

First of all, well done. This is very good stuff. A stunning and plausible piece of work. I am very glad you went into all the crops and animals to such a great degree. Indeed, I am more inclined to complain that you didn't go into enough depth about the plants involved, rather than say you delved into them too much.

Now for a brain dump of thoughts, criticisms and questions...

Basically, I think that its like the principle of the eye. Individual pieces can have a use, but half an eye is useless, so at some point, evolution has to kick into overdrive for periods of accelerated development - punctuated equilibrium.

Actually half an eye is incredibly useful. Even a tenth of an eye is useful. That is why eyes have evolved so many times - light sensitive cells are a positive adaptation, as are having those cells concentrated in patches, as is having some sort of lens in front of those patches.

-Domestication.

I am dubious about how fast the Thule go from semi-domestication to domestication.

We are finding that all human societies engage in some form of environmental modification or another. Often it is quite sophisticated, with some qualifying as "quasi-agriculture". An example of this would be the gardens in the Pacific Northwest mentioned earlier in the thread, deer in Europe (which has been intensively managed since at least the Mesolithic) and reindeer herding. Even the Saami, who are the most intensive reindeer herders, have not fully domesticated the reindeer. The border between full agriculture and intensive ecological management is a blurry one. Crossing the border all the way takes alot of cumulative innovations. And even agricultural peoples may continue to do things like manage deer parks, and let the deer do most of the work of taking care of themselves in between hunting seasons.

Let's separate the questions on animal domestication from plant domestication.

-Animals.

In general, animal domestication seems to move through these stages:

(I should note that at any point short of full domestication, individual animals can be tamed. This becomes more likely the more intensive human/animal relations are. Tamed animals are still genetically identical to wild animals, and often there is no concept that the whole SPECIES can be tamed. The relationship is more individual than domestication. So the tamed animal might carry riders, pull sleds, be a pet, heard animals. In more intensive relationships, several tame animals might be kept together with humans, or move between the humans and the wild relatives that the humans are managing.)

1) People leave the animals alone other than hunting them.
2) People start managing the local ecology to favor preferred hunting animals (for example leaving winter feed out for the deer in Mesolithic Scotland, or making laws/customs that limit hunting to particular times or persons, or destroying plants that the favored animal doesn't like, so there is more ecological space for the animal's food sources).
3) People start managing the favored animal intensely. Herding them, corralling them, protecting them (from other humans and from predators), helping the animals care for their young, harvesting them like they would from domestic animals (shearing, milking etc.).
4) All the individuals of the managed species that humans interact with are tame ones, but there is no selective breeding, animals breed with animals owned by other humans or other tribes, or even with wild animals.
5) Full domestication. There is no mixing between the tame animals and wild relatives. Selective breeding can occur as well as the above forms of taming and management. Over time, this means that distinct genetic lineages occur, which can be identified in the skeletons of the animals.

So while Saami today heard their reindeer, and manage them extremely intensely, the reindeer are not domestic animals. There is genetic mixing between Saami-owned reindeer and wild populations. Also, Saami own non-tame reindeer, which are kept in line by the tame reindeer who help them manage their herds. So at most, reindeer OTL are half way between stage (3) and (4). Most reindeer herders are less intensive than the Saami. I should note that reindeer across Eurasia have recently undergone a rapid acceleration towards domestication. Most of this happening in the 20th Century.

Interestingly, all the deer species, reindeer included, seem to be examples of animals that are too good for humans. We have never domesticated them because they are already perfect for what humanity has wanted from them. So while deer have one of the most intertwined histories with humans after that of the dog, no deer species has ever been fully domesticated.

Going from stage (1) to (3) can happen very quickly indeed - within one human generation. (4) can happen a short time after (3), in a couple generations to a couple centuries. But going from (4) to (5) takes very long. In horses, that seems to have taken about 2000 years.

So I am extremely skeptical of the fully domestic reindeer you propose (or caribou if you prefer) with selective breeding occurring almost immediately after the Thule first start herding them.

Reindeer are quite independent animals. Yes, they are naturally docile and approach humans closely (even wild reindeer will let humans milk them), but they like to go where they wish. So they are difficult to selectively breed for that reason. Also, all the human reindeer management systems of OTL basically involve following the reindeer's natural migrations. Now I am not sure if this independence is something reindeer NEED or that humans have never found inconvenient enough to resist.

I am very skeptical of reindeer cavalry as well. Reindeer don't run as fast at top speed and they aren't as stupid as horses (very important for any animal you want to charge into battle for you). Not to say they wouldn't have military uses, either being ridden, or carrying packs or pulling sleds. We might see reindeer "dragoons", where the Thule warriors dismount to do the actual fighting.

For the other animal domesticates, the only ones that I can see plausibly being subjected to noticeable amounts of selective breeding are the ptarmigan, and possibly the arctic hare, if the Thule can make pens good enough to control the hares' movements.

I like the idea of tame stellar's sea cows - they seem to be tailor made for domestication from what we know of them, so long as the Thule can figure out how to overcome their apparent habit of staying in the water for their whole lives.

I wonder how comfortable sea cows would be in underwater pens... Maybe the Thule would have stone corrals in the shallows near the kelp forests.

Stellar's sea cows apparently didn't deal well with sea urchins. One of the theories for their decline is that hunting of otters allowed the sea urchin population to explode in the kelp forests the sea cows fed from. This TL might see sea otters being managed to a low degree to make sure the kelp pastures of the tame sea cows were urchin free. I'm not thinking of anything very intensive, just taboos against hunting sea otters too much, and Thule looking after their local otter raft during winter to make sure more pups survive their first winter (winter mortality among pups is very high).

I can see both walruses and seals becoming managed animals - potentially even intensively managed animals. I don't think either animal would be easy to tame though.

Would reaching the seal breeding sites on ice floes really be so hard for the Thule? They have decent seagoing technology, and could probably maintain fishing and polar bear killing camps on the floes for at least long enough to have some impact on reducing pup mortality.

Puffins sound like they would make a terrible domesticate. That doesn't mean that the Thule wouldn't manage them. Carving out sheltered rookeries for the puffins and then managing the harvest from the rookery would have a much greater payoff/investment ratio than fully domesticating them.

Moose, like most deer species, are almost tailor made for association with humans. They have the advantage of having wider diets than reindeer, and larger size, so I think it is very likely that the Thule will come to manage their local moose herds, and will often tame individual moose for riding and labour. We may even see moose being traded up into the North lands of the Thule, much like Indians would trade elephants with the Mediterranean world. Having a riding moose or a plow moose might be a big status symbol among the Thule, much like horses were a status symbol for Arabs.

Moose can also metabolize alcohol. So we might see battle moose being used akin to elephants in classical times, where the moose would be gotten drunk, and aimed at the enemy. Could make a good shock tactic. Sober moose are even smarter than reindeer though, so there would be no likelihood of getting them into battle like you would a horse.

In time, like reindeer, I think it is inevitable that moose would become full domesticates for the Thule. But I can't see there just isn't enough time for that to happen.

Also, with both reindeer and moose, the velvet that covers their antlers while they grow has is quite nutritious. Reindeer, since they grow their horns again every year, are good velvet producers. Might be a big mainstay of Thule medicine.

In general with the Thule animal domestications, I think you too often give them the animals as full domesticates, when it is more likely, and even more beneficial, to have the same animals as semi-domesticates.

-Plants.

What you have said about the plants seems pretty solid to me. The Thule are getting new plants in waves that are only a little faster than what other centers of agricultural innovation have experienced, and the reasons why their agricultural revolution is so fast moving are plausibly framed. The most powerful tool in their agricultural package, the micro-climate engineering, is also plausibly explained.

I do wonder how much selection they'd be able to apply to their crops though. When do they make the division between "good plant" and "good patch"? From the way their crops grow in the wild, it seems that "good patch" would be something intuitively grasped, but recognizing a good plant in that patch and finding ways to separate that plant's offspring from others might be a harder step to make.

Hunter gatherers in general know their plants extremely well. So I'd expect the differentiation between "best plants" and "less good" plants to come early with most hunter gatherers transitioning to agriculture. But the Thule aren't ordinary hunter-gatherers, they are drawn from a culture that OTL has a poor regard for plants. In some ways, that gives them more advantages in developing horticulture, since sticking with the plants you know is easier than learning new ones. In other ways, it makes it hard to predict

Plant genetics is also very unpredictable. Sometimes good plants might not give good offspring from their seeds. The Thule crops that can be propagated vegitatively will have to worry about this less of course. But the Thule crops may be essentially the same for thousands of years, or they may see one or two enormous leaps with random-seeming timings when advantageous hybridizations occur, or gradual cumulative improvement. It is very hard to say. Knowing more about the plants genetics would tell us something.

And how easy is it to control the seed spread of their crops? I noticed alot of them had wind-borne seeds, but on the other hand, the micro-climates might mean those crops don't experience enough wind...

Also, how easy is it to control the plants' genetic exchange? I can't remember seeing much discussion on what plants were wind or insect pollinated. It is generally difficult to control plant pollination, but if the Thule can control that, it will help them exert more selective pressure on their plants.

From the sounds of the plant biology you have described and the nature of Thule civilization (i.e. extensive and with good communications), I'd expect the main crops to be like potatoes and brassicas and to diversify into thousands of varieties, some of which may be as distinct as the turnip is from the broccoli or the mustard are from each-other. None of those may be particularly better yielding than the wild varieties. Or there may be a couple of serendipitous events resulting in leaps like Europe made when it crossed the Chilean wild strawberry with the North American wild strawberry and produced the garden strawberry.

-Sleds and Canoes.

Not much has been said so far about one of the big advantages of the Arctic: the ease of travel. The area is criss-crossed with rivers and lakes. In summer, they can be plied by canoe, in winter, they are like highways for sledding. It is easy to travel far and fast. It is easy to move large loads.

The Thule civilization is going to be highly interconnected. Trade in ideas will be strong, particularly with the shaman culture they have. Sled-caravans will be able to move some serious bulk at economical costs. People will be able to move large distances as well. Even Thule who are too poor to own enough dogs or reindeer to pull their sled can pull it themselves. And humans are actually fairly decent as draft animals go.

The Thule earthworks could produce good year-round sledding conditions as well. I could see the shaded face of Thule earthworks being used to pile snow as a water store, and those snow piles getting connected into "sled roads" as the earthworks became linked.

I suspect Thule population movements will look more like a Germanic or steppe nomad Volkswanderung, rather than Polynesian hopping. Population surplus from core regions can reach the peripheries of settlement within a winter or two. We may see waves rippling across Thule territory as each displacement war, or economic hardship, knocks people loose, displaced groups forming alliances, either displacing weaker neighbours (who repeat the cycle) or skipping over the Thule settled areas entirely, gaining passage through the other Thule groups in their way by diplomacy, war or trade. Working their way across the world until they end up among the Sea Thule, or the Cree borderlands, or Siberia.

The Ellesmere traders, being squeezed by the South Greenlanders on one side, and Hudson river traders on another, may end up being one of those groups pushed out to the periphery. Their network across the Western Thule region allowing them to invite relatives and allies all the way across to Lappland, the Siberian Islands and Taymyr, resulting in something between a Volkswandrung and a European colonial expedition.

Better communications is going to help disease spread. I have a nasty feeling that a given plague will spread across the whole of the Thule world in a couple years.

That will make things interesting for the Europeans too. Plague can travel faster through the well connected Thule world than it can between Mexico and Spain, or from China to Russia. We might see things like a smallpox epidemic starting around British trade posts in Hudson Bay, burning through the Thule world at the speed of dog sled, hitting Europe again in the Thule-Sweden borderlands, passing on to British traders in the Baltic, and reaching Britain itself the year after the initial outbreak. That is an increase in danger, given that in OTL, all the communications across the Atlantic were isolated ships that were at sea for long enough to make it likely that an infected individual could be detected before landfall - symptoms take at most 17 days to show, and most crossings were longer than that. The crossing from Sweden to England is a bit faster.

-The Sea.

Given the richness of the Northern Seas, I think the Thule would be much more involved with the sea than has currently been shown. Newfoundland is going to attract Thule fishermen just as much as it attracted the Basques, Irish, Scots, French, English, Spanish and Danes.

Salt is going to be an important trade good. Even if it isn't the main form of preservation the Thule adopt.

-Sea Thule.

The biggest impact of the Sea Thule as I see it is their improved Umiaks and navigation opening a sea route from South Greenland to Labrador and Labrador to the Hudson core area. That is going to revolutionize certain sorts of trade, shaman travel, genetic exchange and exchange in ideas.

Also, I don't think one can underestimate the importance for the Siberian Thule having another trade link with the larger Thule culture.

Also, why are the Sea Thule so obsessed with barren islands, when barely occupied areas like Lappland and Finnmark offer what would be to them Eden conditions? These areas were not really controlled by the southern kingdoms and barely occupied.

I doubt that the Thule will take up Norse style boats soon, but for different reasons than have been mentioned before.

1) Wood is expensive, seal skins less so, so it makes sense for them to conserve as much wood as they can.
2) The Sea Thule are sending big colonization expeditions across the sea ice often. I expect the easiest way to move their boats in these expeditions is to attach runners to the boats and use them as big sleds. That would mean that lighter boats would be advantageous.
3) The relative ease of sending trade/colonization/exploration missions out by sled versus the dangerous business of sending boats out onto the stormy seas is going to mean the Sea Thule are unlikely to see the need for bigger tougher boats.

Sea Thule sled/boats have a chance to spread right across the Thule realm.

-Fertilizer.

The Thule interest in propitiating the soil spirits is going to lead them to discover fertilizers soon enough. Seaweed and guano could be other potential trade goods to feed into the system.

-Thule money.

The Thule lack any of the precursors to develop money before European contact. And going from how long it took to develop money in the old world, I think the Thule would need at least 4000 years to develop it on their own. Most likely is that European contact will result in certain commodities achieving universal value - things like furs, iron, roseroot and booze. Even then, true money is unlikely before the 19th Century I reckon, particularly since the Thule are going to be clobbered by a whole lot of disease in the meantime.

-Secularism.

I've seen a few people describe the Thule as having a secular shamanism. But really, aren't we seeing an intensely superstitious people who happen to have practical superstitions being described in secular terms by future anthropologists (i.e. DValdron)?

It seems to me these Thule will be intensely mystical and superstitious. Their mysteries and superstitions will work very well in their environment, and they seem to have a certain flexibility (so new things will be poked and experimented with to find out what the "new spirit" likes), but it isn't European critical thought, and if anything, the Thule will be more resistant to European rationalism. A belief system that doesn't include spirits will simply be anathema to them.

-Crop adoption.

People are talking about the Thule crops are spreading waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaay too fast. I would expect from how things have gone in our history, that the Thule package will spread to other cultures in a major way over about 300 years. Even that may be too fast. It could as easily take 600. Or 1000.

Keep in mind that when Europeans colonized the new world, it took about a century of Europe planting colonies and having them starve before people adapted maize to European agriculture. (Where they didn't starve, that was usually because they were living by hunting and fishing or looted the local Indians and raised cattle, as in Mesoamerica.) It took another century or so for maize to spread across the Atlantic, and it only really became big in the 19th Century. Importantly, WE STILL DON'T USE most of the maize cultivation package. Europeans suffered from a disease called pellagra up until the mid 20th Century because in areas where maize became predominant, they didn't cook it right, meaning they were short on vitamin B3. That is true even when European maize farmers were living right next to native farmers who nixtamalized their corn and thus weren't suffering the disease. We still don't cook our maize properly, and pellagra is only kept at bay because we have broader diets now. Additionally, we don't farm maize very well - there is alot of needless soil degradation in maize growing regions because people basically grow the stuff like it is wacky wheat. So we took maize and we slotted it into our existing agricultural package, and even with the power of modern science telling us that we could farm maize better, or get more nutrition out of the maize by cooking it better, we don't.

The potato, again, took centuries to spread. It seems to have first been taken up by Irish and Basque fishermen returning from the new world. It spread to the Spanish vassals in France/Germany (the "Spanish road"). And then it sat. Barely spreading. For a couple centuries. Then Frederik the Great noticed how useful the plant was in war (potatoes are harder for invading armies to extort from the peasants, meaning that in a hard war there is less famine). After the 7 years war, the incredible potato-driven robustness of Prussia meant that every European power started forcing their farmers to experiment the potato. It also took Frederik the Great to change the potato from a garden crop to a major field crop. Rigid laws and customs meant that it wasn't allowed to be used in the main fields.

But again. WE STILL DON'T FARM THEM VERY WELL. People would rather farm potatoes they know poorly, rather than find a variety of potato that agrees with the soil and climate they have to work with. These are one of the biggest caloric contributors to the human race, and we farm them well enough to get by, and no better.

Beyond that, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of crops that we don't use because they don't slot into our agricultural package, or we just haven't gotten interested in them yet. For all the press about the Columbian crop exchange, we have only adopted a fraction of the American crops that we could use to the rest of the world.

This goes for the agricultural packages of India, the Middle East, China... There is a vast range of stuff we could use, would provide our culture massive benefits, but we aren't interested in. The stuff that has spread, often spreads incompletely - so a plant spreads, but the techniques to get the most out of it don't.

It applies to other cultures besides European cultures. The Manchu lived on some of the best farmland on Asia, but in the main they lived as steppe nomads.

Now spices seem to follow a different pattern. Once a culture acquires a taste for them (though again, that important first step can take a century or two), the spread of plantations is rapid. Roseroot, being known to Europe already, could have an advantage here. But then, it may be at a disadvantage. Flax is a far superior fiber plant to cotton, yet the industrial revolution saw a proliferation of cotton mills mainly because flax was seen as a peasant cloth, where wool was a middle class cloth and cotton a foreign luxury. So roseroot may get ignored because it is low status.

If it avoids the low-status trap, perhaps Pomor or Norwegian plantation colonies would be staking out some of the best land in an area and then trading with the local Thule for food in return for iron, wood and guns from the south. I'm not sure how roseroot's biology would react to that. Maybe Europeans would just farm them in gardens around trade fortresses.

So based on real experience, I doubt Thule crops are going to spread any time soon, and when they do, they will stay in the Norse village that adopted them for one or two centuries before someone like Peter the Great walks by and realizes "hey, I can build an empire on this plant!" And when that happens, it will be a partial adoption. Russians might farm roseroot plantations in European-style fields, I doubt intensely that any European culture will ever adopt micro-climate engineering. That sort of change in technique seems to be even less popular than adopting new plants.

And then, there is the question of why Europeans would want new crops from the North? By the time that any plant transfer into Europe picks up speed, I would suspect that the Thule will have filled any niche that their crops would work better in. Why? Because there are simply so damn many of them. This is an expansionist culture with a large population (larger than the populations of any culture that would be competing with them, bar the French) and a huge advantage in the biomes that they favor.

I think another thing the discussion on this thread often misses is just how unfavorable the climate was to the Europeans. Europe conquered the boral north only in the 19th Century, and only because the native peoples were so, so much weaker. Even then, there wasn't much effective control on local matters. Before the 19th Century, Europeans exercised influence, but the bad climate discouraged seeking anything more concrete. And this is despite the area having attractive resources (furs, fish, seals, whales). Why spend precious effort getting familiar with Thule crops in their hell climate when you can just trade or extort the Thule crops from the Thule themselves? Why try bringing crops from a hell climate into the more comfortable climates when your own crops grow well enough to maintain your trade post or fort? Particularly when most of the places you could grow Thule crops down south can be used to raise tasty beef instead?

So I can see the Europeans adopting a coherent version of the Thule package maybe by the time people are getting interested in colonizing Antarctica or Tibet. Before then, I think any of the plants are very unlikely to be adopted as anything other than a garden crops in European villages that directly neighbour the Thule.

-Norway & Sweden.

I can see Norway doing better in this TL. But not because of the Norse adopting Thule agriculture, but rather because of the Norse adopting the Thule, as they did with the Saami. So we could see the Thule in Europe considering the king of Norway to be the leader of their tribal coalition, and a hybrid culture emerging.

Demographics would indicate that the Thule would even become dominant. Even with colonists suffering heavy losses to disease. All of Norway at this point had a population of about 300,000, if that. With Greenland alone having 1 million Thule, and more emigrants likely coming from Labrador, Baffin and Ellesmere, I think Norway is going to become heavily Thulified.

That would be even more the case if Denmark keeps control of southern Norway, where most of the population lives. Trondheim Norway is all favorable to Thule agriculture, and has an even more sparse Norwegian population outside Trondheim itself. You might see Trondheim remain a Norse town into modern times, and there would be Norse speaking fishing villages, and then all the rest (say 70% of Trondheim-Norway's population) would be Thule.

Sweden in this period is mostly a region of temperate farms and forest hunters. The areas where the Thule package would do well were not controlled by Sweden in any meaningful sense. I don't see the spread of the Thule into the Swedish-Finnish forests, and I don't see their crops spreading much either. Sweden is probably going to be the big loser of the Thule coming in to Scandinavia, for exactly the same reasons that OTL Sweden won big by the weakening of Norway.

But then... Maybe losing like this wouldn't be so bad for Sweden. Sweden's bid for empire didn't do the country much good. A more cautious Sweden could end up having a less dramatic but more prosperous history in TTL. The richer Norway and Thule settlement to the North is going to open up plenty of opportunities for trade.

-Russia.

I don't think Russia is going to get any direct advantage from the Thule package. Just like Sweden, Russia is based on temperate farmers and forest hunters. There are very few areas of European Russia that are good for the Thule package, the areas that are good for the Thule package are unlikely to be part of TTL Russia (The Kola Peninsula and the Kanin peninsula). The advantages it will get are going to come from Thule that they can trade with or tax.

-Siberia.

With regards to Russian expansion, the conquest of Siberia wasn't really a concerted push, as it is often portrayed. It was mainly adventurers going across the Urals to trade. The budgets were shoe string. Even when the Tsars became directly involved, the budgets were shoestring and control expanded more because there was a sucking power vacuum rather than a strong desire to push.

One of the most important events in Siberian history was the Chinese annihilation of the Dzungars in the 18th Century. The Dzungars, and the previous steppe empires, had a protection racket going with the Siberian tribes North of them. The Dzungars got a tribute of furs in return for protecting their loyal vassal/allies. When the Dzungars got nobbled, it meant there was no power to resist Russian expansion into Kazakhstan and East Siberia. It also meant, that the Russians could step into the role the Dzungars had played, just as they had in West Siberia after they conquered the Sibir Khanate.

Adding the Thule to the mix will radically change Siberia.

Thule pressure is going to change the Chukchi, if they aren't overwhelmed and absorbed by the Thule entirely (the Chukchi have a really bad numbers disadvantage, and they are fighting an enemy as at home in the environment as they are). With Thule raiding Chukchi and Chukchi raiding Thule, cultural and genetic exchange between the two peoples will be high. We may even see a Chukchi/Koryak Khanate emerge with the settled Itelmen as vassals. When the Thule are weakened by the European plagues (which is likely to happen before the Chukchi are hit by the plagues, due to the highly connected nature of Thule culture), we might see the Chukchis playing the part of Mongols and conquering the Thule while they are weakened by disease.

Considering the ease of moving around on the Siberian rivers, I suspect that the Thule are likely to at least trade with the Mongol and Turkic peoples to the South. They may be made Dzungar vassals. Or perhaps a Thule-Chukchi Khanate (emerging by either of the methods discussed above) would be a competitor to the Mongols, allying with the Yakut to raid the Oirat and Buryat tribes.

I agree with DValdron that direct contact with the settled empires of Japan, Korea and China is unlikely. They are a long way away, and the Siberian Thule are going to have alot of fish to fry closer to home. There is certainly going to be indirect interaction going on though.

The strong dugout canoe cultures in the Pacific Northwest, as well as Sea Thule style wood framed skin canoes coming from both the West and the East, makes it pretty much inevitable that the Thule will develop a major seafaring tradition in the Pacific. Trade with the Ainu will certainly occur. I doubt Ainu will be pushovers for the Thule though. The Ainu weren't easy for the Japanese to push over - we remember them as pushovers OTL because compared to 19th Century Japan, they were pushovers. But before then, the Japanese were only able to slowly push the Ainu back. And the Thule are well south of their ideal climate.

We may see the Ainu growing more powerful and sophisticated due to Thule and Japanese trade and being able to act as middle men between the two. Also, an idea: Ainu/Thule sea raids on Japan. Ainu vikings tickles my funny bone.

One thing is sure. The Thule will make Siberia richer and more violent. If the Thule do clash with the Dzungars over the vassalage of the tribes between them, it is likely to happen towards the end of the 17th Century and the beginning of the 18th Century. That could mean that the distracted Dzungars don't raid China so much, meaning China doesn't see the point of launching an expensive expedition to annihilate the Dzungars. Or it could be that the Thule and the Dzungars clash right as Dzungar-Chinese relations are at their lowest, and the Dzungars are crushed between the Thule and the Chinese. The Dzungars surviving for longer or being destroyed earlier would cause radical changes for Russia in Siberia. It will also change Kazakh history quite significantly, and through that, change Persian history.

Different Persian history will mean different Indian history. We could see the Persians or the Afghans contesting India with the British. In OTL, it was the Persians who smashed the Mughal empire, and the Afghans who smashed the Marathras, and opened the power vacuum that the British stepped into.

-Demographics.

I ran some numbers for Thule demographics. The best estimates I see for the population of the Aleutian Islands before European contact gives a population somewhere in the range of 10-20 thousand. Given the agricultural potentials posited for the Thule package (which I think are quite plausible, the agricultural productivity posited is on par with the productivity of Mongol style pastoralism, that may, if anything, underestimate the productivity the Thule can achieve) even if we take the lowest number put forth - that Thule agriculture can support a total population of 5 million, that still requires the Thule to breed ferociously. Growing from 20,000 to 5 million in 600 years means a growth of 0.95% per year. Growing from 10,000 to 20 million in 600 years takes a growth rate of 1.29% per year. That is similar to what Europe experienced during the 19th Century.

Now the PoD is back in 700AD, so we could posit a bigger Aleutian population. Say 60,000 (plausible given that the proto agriculture is allowing them to overcome the bottlenecks of hunter-gatherer living), it would need a population growth rate of 0.75% per year to hit 5 million by 1500 and 0.98% to hit 20 million by 1500. Those are on par with the largest pre-industrial population booms in history.

This is plausible for a pre-modern population that has lots of room to expand. It does have interesting consequences though. Demographics have a certain momentum. I figure the Thule have about 700-750 years of being able to have large families, confident that they can either fight their neighbours for more territory, intensify their crop raising/herding/fishing, go over the horizon in search of new lands, or invent new professions that allow them to trade for food with neighbours (like the Ellesmere becoming traders, or the Greenlanders becoming soapstone carvers). That means that when they hit a wall, their cultural response will be to try and push the wall down, rather than reduce their footprint to fit the wall. As the Thule heartlands fill up, migrations will go ever further, rather than people reducing their birthrates to fit the more crowded landscape. Eventually birthrates would fall (over a generation or two, seems to be the rule), but the Thule are going to be clobbered by European plagues well before they hit the ultimate limits of the Arctic. That could give them an advantage in overcoming the plagues too. Theirs is a culture that expects to have many children in a family, giving them an advantage in adapting so that they can out-breed the plagues.

Assuming a 90% death rate from the plagues, the Thule population would recover in about 200 years, if it kept growing at 0.98%. If the death rate was 80%, they would recover in 150 years. If the death rate was 50%, they would recover in 65 years. As I say, there is a good chance the Thule (with their prior experience of the effects of disease, and understanding of quarantine) to lose less childbearing females to nursing the sick (and thus becoming sick themselves) and so be able to increase their family sizes in response to the resources freed up by all their dead fellow Thule. Most native societies saw their birth rates drop in the face of the apocalyptic plagues (which tended to hit women harder then men).

Demographics also gives the Thule a huge advantage in dealing with Europe. The European plagues hurt the Europeans almost as bad as they do the natives. But the Europeans could always bring more Europeans from outside the plague zone to fill in the gaps left in the landscape by the decimated Indian tribes. In the Arctic, the Europeans can't really do that. The place is too unpleasant to settle, and the Thule will be too fractious to conquer. Where Europeans do predominate, the Thule package means the Europeans are the ones at a disadvantage. In the North, I reckon it will be the Europeans who find that each plague brings further Thule encroachment.

-State Formation.

Anthropologists have given alot of attention to state formation in Polynesia (which contains lots of independent evolutions of states, and also has the most recent examples of independent state formation). Two things seem to govern the speed of state formation:

1) the population
2) the length of time a given island was settled

But even on the largest islands, the process took centuries.

I am not sure that the Thule have enough time to develop any sort of stable state hierarchy. Particularly given that their society spends most of its history in a continuous state of change and expansion. Like Germanic tribes, alot of the wealth would be in animals and in things that could be loaded onto sleds, meaning that people can vote with their feet. The more they have invested in the land itself, the less they would want to, but nonetheless, no strongman can force people to stay on the land. That places strict limits on the power of a strongman. What I would expect to find is a situation where prestigious Shamen or families would build the first Thule tribes, the most prestigious tribes would build the first clans, and the clans would occasionally be unified by particularly prestigious shamen or headmen into great coalitions. But when the prestigious people died, or when the family, tribal and clan alliances shifted, the proto-states would fall.

I would expect strategic towns would become centers for empire building, as they have an advantage in gaining prestige themselves, or attracting prestigious individuals to place their "capital" in the town.

-Social Organization.

According to what I can find, Inuit OTL didn't have any social organization beyond the family before contact. Given this rapidly expanding ATL Thule culture, I started asking myself what sort of social evolution would occur? How would specialization creep in? Who would the chiefs be drawn from? Polynesian chiefdoms evolve from the Polynesian idea that different lineages have different levels of prestige. As populations rise on an island, that idea naturally leads to the idea that the most prestigious family should rule over and care for the less prestigious families. The Thule didn't seem to have this concept. And they expand across the Arctic in a very short time indeed.

I am wondering if what is most likely is for the shamen to step into all the specialization gaps that are opening up. Basically, in the Thule world view, specialized knowledge is basically a person knowing how to deal with a certain sort of spirit better. Just like early blacksmiths were considered to be magicians, so Thule metalworkers will be metal shamen. Thule chieftains will be war-shamen. Roving war-bands will be lead by lesser war-shamen, with members of their war-bands being considered their apprentices. Pykrete makers will be ice-shamen. Diplomats will be experts in dealing with the the spirits of other families. The best hunters will be considered hunt-shamen. Any sort of specialized knowledge will be seen as having a supernatural aspect, and respected as such.

-The Age of Plague and Fur.

The plagues are going to put the Thule through hell. I am betting they are most likely to hit when Europeans start trading for furs in the area too. The combination of getting plugged into the European economic system and having most of the population die in a series of disease waves is going to be a huge shock to the system.

State-formation is going to go into overdrive, as Thule strongmen work to try and control as much of the fur trade as they can. I am not sure if guns would be very attractive to the Thule, given their environment, but plentiful iron would certainly be a military upset.

There will be war and strife. And I would bet on at least a few European attempts to colonize the Thule areas. I doubt they will be successful though.

I do wonder if this will result in the Thule developing their own messianic religion. Founders of great religions crop up an awful lot during times of war, apocalypse and cultural exchange.

I also wonder if the plagues will be the wedge that Christianity needs to successfully root itself among the Thule. The arbitrary god in the Bible will make alot more sense to the Thule after they've been clobbered by wave after wave of disease arbitrarily carrying away the foolish, the wise, the young, the old, the poor, the rich, the weak, the powerful with seeming randomness.

Thule civilization is likely to be either destroyed or almost destroyed. Sedentary life could end, with Thule becoming nomadic pastoralists and fishermen, grazing their herds where their ancestors once farmed. That happened to a few of the Indian groups in the South.

I do think the Thule have good chances for recovery though. It might be a different civilization than what they had before. But as a people, they have too many advantages to go down easy.

-The hard nuts of the North.

The Thule sound like the perfect anti-European native civilization. Their agriculture involves fortifying large areas of the countryside. They don't have too much political unification. They live in a cold hostile hell landscape for anyone who isn't them. They have a huge population. They breed fast. They are young and expansionist. They have a strong communications advantage in their landscape. Their ideas of war emphasize ambush and genocide, rather than ritualized set piece battles, as for example, the Aztecs did. They have a traveling intellectual class that is actively engaged in transferring information.

These are the Araucanians on steroids.

-Even good things end.

One of the most important reasons for the English triumph in India was that the English spent less time arguing with each other than their competitors. The men of Honorable John Company may have hated each-other sometimes. But they still worked together to achieve broadly the same goals. The other European powers held similar advantages in the tight fights they faced. Being better organized has a great power. And I think even after 300 years of contact, the Thule are still going to be well behind the Europeans in terms of social organization.

And nothing in this TL has sent any butterflies to stop maize and the potato from reaching Europe. The new crops, just as in OTL, will fuel a demographic expansion, mercantile wealth and expanding populations will make it likely some European (probably England still) will have an industrial revolution, enabling European populations to expand still further, devote greater economic surplus to conquest and trade. Unless the Thule share in the European agricultural revolution, European populations are going to get so much larger and richer that the Europeans will be able to conquer or stake out spheres of influence, no matter how hard the Thule fight.

By the end of the 19th Century, I expect the Thule states will have been overwhelmed one way or another.

I reckon that in the long run, the Thule have swapped the fate of OTL's Inuit for the fate of OTL's Ottoman Empire or Persia.

And the alternate historians of TTL will be writing "what if the Thule had an industrial revolution" or "what if Lawrence of Chukchia had failed in liberating the Chukchi from the Thule Khanate of Siberia".

Hope people enjoyed that brain dump.

fasquardon

[DValdron]

Wow, that's extensive. Let me digest.

[Sam R.]

Originally Posted by fasquardon

-The hard nuts of the North.

The Thule sound like the perfect anti-European native civilization. Their agriculture involves fortifying large areas of the countryside. They don't have too much political unification. They live in a cold hostile hell landscape for anyone who isn't them. They have a huge population. They breed fast. They are young and expansionist. They have a strong communications advantage in their landscape. Their ideas of war emphasize ambush and genocide, rather than ritualized set piece battles, as for example, the Aztecs did. They have a traveling intellectual class that is actively engaged in transferring information.

These are the Araucanians on steroids.

I was going to say Super-Maori but yeah.

thanks,
Sam.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Wow, that's extensive. Let me digest.

I agree. There's a lot going on for me this week, so I shouldn't start writing anything right now anyway.

I certainly skimmed because I am under time pressure, and it is a lot, so I'll be rereading carefully before saying anything much about it.

I was probably also reading like the dog in the Far Side cartoon--"what we say to dogs versus what they hear;" a boy is scolding his dog Ginger; the dog hears "blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah Ginger..."

But it did seem, among some rather sad but plausible caveats and cautions, that fasquardon does reiterate some points I've long been taken with stressing--The Arctic as a fastness for the Thule due to the tough time Europeans have there; the ease of travel making for a very mobile society that could become a major trading people. I wouldn't have gone so far as to suggest that despite the somewhat greater experience the Europeans have with the Eurasian disease cocktail the Arctic fortress effect plus the high population growth rate customs of the Thule would add up to Thule actually expanding their footprint at European trader/colonial expense, but given the high birthrate, it's definitely something to consider.

When we consider the birthrate though, we need to think about the nature of gender roles in Thule society. I am not sure how those work in OTL Inuit societies, but the point is, whatever base that provided, the Thule are different now. Otherwise they might have developed the packages, but much more slowly (so they'd have had to start much earlier, as I originally assumed they would way back when this stuff was first being brainstormed). In order to fit the "POD in the first millennium CE" timeframe, proto-Thule society had to shift over toward expecting women to have lots of babies. This kind of thing goes deep in a society; the causes have to be forceful and the consequences have major bearing on the society's worldviews and dynamics.

As for the rapid transfer of Thule cultivation/animal husbandry to Europeans and possibly Siberian peoples, it's quite possible certain enthusiasms do make me uncritical of an ASB fast pace.

I would put in a special plea for the northern Nordics, for the same reasons I expected the Greenland Norse to seize on them much more than they did; these are people whom the European metasociety has thrust to the far limits of possibility of the old crops, during a relatively warm part of the interglacial, who are now being blighted by the Little Ice Age. They are in a dangerous place and they know it.

If we can justify the rapid rooting of Thule methods in Iceland (and I support DValdron's later realization that even if it begins with separate communities with relatively little contact with each other, over a couple generations that will change and the societies will at least intermesh, if not start merging completely) then I think both kinship--shared culture, shared contacts, even a shared king--and the common situation in north Norway which is almost as bad off as Iceland will encourage a secondary transfer and merger there. If in fact the demographics of Trondheim-Norway are mainly Thule immigrants while the growth of the Norse themselves lags, so be it.

Everyone seems skeptical of a similar process affecting outlier Russian peoples living in the far north for various reasons--trade; political flight, simple drift. Perhaps the Thule make a choice--either they will war with Europeans, or if they are going to ally with any it will be the Nordics of Denmark's lost outlying claims that they've first made contact and to some extent merged with. If Thule are going to reject Christianity the practice they got brushing off Catholic/Lutheran missionaries will apply to Orthodox ones too; if they are going to strategically (or conceivably, under genuine religious inspiration, quite deeply) adopt a Christian sect it will be the proto-Lutherans (or conceivably the northlands develop something parallel to Anglicanism, a High Church that is essentially Catholicism without obedience to the Pope, perhaps one that encompasses various strains of more radical Protestantism too, maybe even a syncretic shamanistic/Christian hybrid) then they will again have done that already and not be so interested in the Orthodox alternative, having already been told these people are heretics. (Or anyway schismatics).

I still personally think the new north Russians are as plausible as the transformed Iceland and Norway, and might even get started not much later and before the Nordic version develops very far. It would all depend on just how the numbers of Russians who had already found their way to the White Sea regions that are good for Thule crops compare to the numbers of Icelanders in a similarly tight place; the difference being, a continental people can always drift back south gradually while an island people with no good alternative islands nearby are in a starker position.

But no one else seems to want to champion the Russian/Thule fusion the way I do, and I don't know nearly enough about that part of Russia in this period to make an intelligent contribution beyond my own wishful thinking.
-----
Regarding other commentary that cropped up before fasquardon's far-reaching feedback, the main thing that might butterfly Indian history is that while India is far and most of Europe will not be very strongly affected, England is in the zone that can be affected. If we put the brakes on Thule crops spreading much beyond the north Nordic lands, then we don't butterfly Scotland a whole lot, but the changing political picture up north will be something few if any European powers will look at more closely than the English will. I've already mentioned the notion OTL that Elizabeth might consider marrying the Russian Tsar. If Elizabeth's reign is butterflied away by any number of plausible deviations; if she or alternative monarchs pursue somewhat different courses; if there is personal union of Scotland and England leading to something like the Act of Union and the formation of the United Kingdom, then England could wind up in quite a different position. In the general rough and tumble of European politics and the intertwined social and economic transformations I'd expect European development to follow roughly the same path overall and for England, even if marginalized relative to OTL, to be a major center of industry eventually. The broad picture of European expansion toward global dominance by the end of the 19th century shouldn't be derailed.

But the exact nature of the penetration of colonial power into such major centers as India and China could be strongly affected. If come 1700 the British Isles are more or less as OTL, whether Scotland and England are merely close allies by long custom or actually united in some formal fashion, then yes, India might be expected to be subjugated in a similar fashion. But if they are two rival kingdoms, or their trading, raiding, and ultimately colonial objectives have been diverted northward, it might not happen that way at all. Either some other European colonial power plays the role of the John Company, or India remains multipolar, with some native princes learning to play the rival Europeans off against each other.

Finally, if in the same time frame we are considering Indian colonialism in, we look at European settlement on the northern coast of North America (here called Columbia, unless DValdron decides that is wrong) then clearly the Thule can and will affect settlements as far south as OTL New York and possibly Pennsylvania. If we assumed the same peoples under their alternate regimes attempted colonies in the same places, the French and English will both have some interval of non-Thule natives between them and Thule, but Thule are expansionist and aggressive, and I'd think either the European powers would seek them out to make some kind of local agreements with, or expanding Thule will push south and down the coasts to make their own contacts.

If the French were to send the expeditions they did where they did OTL, and follow parallel policies involving recruiting native peoples to feed into their trade network and to ally with the New France government against other colonial powers, then I can see Thule allies being brought south as auxiliary fighters during winter campaigns. That would transform the situation of the New England colonies and make driving France out of the north far more difficult, in fact it might be the French who prevail and seize New England

This would also react back on European matters in general and possibly affect the ventures to the Indian Ocean and beyond.

[FDW]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

snip

The thing about European dominance is that it's hardly assured from the perspective of the 16th century, it really took 250 years of fighting and destruction for Europe to develop the tools that allowed them to dominate the rest of the world. Regarding European expansion into India and Siberia, the fact that the Thule sphere exists, and it is accessible to Europe means that the European states will attempt to put in more resources into projecting power into those areas, which will take away manpower from other areas. And regarding a Thule-Ainu Contact, it might be possible that a more proactive Ainu might spur the northern Japanese lords (and whomever wins the Sengoku Royal Rumble) to be more proactive in controlling the north.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by FDW

The thing about European dominance is that it's hardly assured from the perspective of the 16th century, it really took 250 years of fighting and destruction for Europe to develop the tools that allowed them to dominate the rest of the world. Regarding European expansion into India and Siberia, the fact that the Thule sphere exists, and it is accessible to Europe means that the European states will attempt to put in more resources into projecting power into those areas, which will take away manpower from other areas. And regarding a Thule-Ainu Contact, it might be possible that a more proactive Ainu might spur the northern Japanese lords (and whomever wins the Sengoku Royal Rumble) to be more proactive in controlling the north.

Well, my belief is that Europe dominated the world OTL because theirs was the first region to tip over into developing capitalism, and that by the 16th century the continent was on an irrevocable course down that path. Given that, it doesn't matter which nations played which roles, or the exact path; capitalism is what steamrollered every other society in the world and what they had to adapt to; that most failed does not strike me as their fault but an aspect of the revolutionary nature of capitalist society, which caused quite as much turmoil in Europe itself as in the most wretched colony of later centuries.

I doubt the general thrust of European expansion will be diverted northward; insofar as it does grow that way, it will be mostly by Northern European peoples (mainly the Norwegians and Icelanders, possibly Swedes, Russians, and various British peoples) who are affected by Thule crops. In short, what drive Europe gains in that direction won't be at the expense of other OTL efforts, it will be an additional effort by peoples boosted by Thule contact.

And on the other hand one thing fasquardon and I do agree on is that the Arctic is unattractive territory for Europeans, full of tenacious Thule--the extra push north will tend not to be reinforced because success in that direction is hard to achieve and fleeting, except insofar as one can achieve lasting alliances with lasting Thule powers.

The Thule would be the last peoples to succumb to the general expansion of Europe despite their close proximity. Succumb they will if they don't adapt to the rising world capitalist order somehow.

I like to think they can.

[FDW]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

Well, my belief is that Europe dominated the world OTL because theirs was the first region to tip over into developing capitalism, and that by the 16th century the continent was on an irrevocable course down that path. Given that, it doesn't matter which nations played which roles, or the exact path; capitalism is what steamrollered every other society in the world and what they had to adapt to; that most failed does not strike me as their fault but an aspect of the revolutionary nature of capitalist society, which caused quite as much turmoil in Europe itself as in the most wretched colony of later centuries.

I doubt the general thrust of European expansion will be diverted northward; insofar as it does grow that way, it will be mostly by Northern European peoples (mainly the Norwegians and Icelanders, possibly Swedes, Russians, and various British peoples) who are affected by Thule crops. In short, what drive Europe gains in that direction won't be at the expense of other OTL efforts, it will be an additional effort by peoples boosted by Thule contact.

And on the other hand one thing fasquardon and I do agree on is that the Arctic is unattractive territory for Europeans, full of tenacious Thule--the extra push north will tend not to be reinforced because success in that direction is hard to achieve and fleeting, except insofar as one can achieve lasting alliances with lasting Thule powers.

The Thule would be the last peoples to succumb to the general expansion of Europe despite their close proximity. Succumb they will if they don't adapt to the rising world capitalist order somehow.

I like to think they can.

I disagree vehemently. While capitalism had it's origins in the 16th century, it didn't really play anything more than bit role (if that), in Europe's rise. Europe's rise can be much more easily explained through the twin pillars of technological process and the statehood concepts that emerged out of the ashes of "Universal Empire" theory of statehood's final death in Europe during the Protestant Reformation. These two pillars were effectively catalyzed by the weakness of much of the rest of the world during the 18th and 19th centuries, allowing Europe to claim dominion over much of the world.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by FDW

I disagree vehemently. While capitalism had it's origins in the 16th century, it didn't really play anything more than bit role (if that), in Europe's rise. Europe's rise can be much more easily explained through the twin pillars of technological process and the statehood concepts that emerged out of the ashes of "Universal Empire" theory of statehood's final death in Europe during the Protestant Reformation. These two pillars were effectively catalyzed by the weakness of much of the rest of the world during the 18th and 19th centuries, allowing Europe to claim dominion over much of the world.

Obviously we have different approaches to understanding these things and will disagree due to differing perspectives.

I believe the peculiar circumstances you stress may account for why and how Europe reconfigured to capitalism, but once this transition took place the basic drive sustained them; the new state system in particular I see as part of capitalism's superstructure. And sustained technological innovation is both driven and enabled by capitalism and helps prevent alternatives to capitalism being implemented.

So, given that the alternatives caused by the Thule evolutions don't drastically affect developments in Europe's core much yet, the perturbations caused by their spread into Europe will merely feed into the general processes and augment them. And I hope the Thule as given here will be peculiarly well able to absorb the European package and fit themselves into the developing new global system.

In my opinion Japan did as well as they did because of fortuitous pre-adaptations; very roughly speaking, Japanese society happened by sheer chance to come close enough to an early modern European sort of organization to adopt European models pretty well. The Thule are quite different but I'm hoping they can do it for very different reasons.

[farwalker]

You know, Shevek and FDW's discussion is part of the reason I love this site. Only here would you get a discussion about a hypothetical Arctic civilization side-tracked into a (well reasoned and polite) argument about the nature of the rise of capitalism in Europe and whether or not it was inevitable.

It's like University without the crippling student debt and courses you don't like.

Oh and I'm also thoroughly enjoying this TL. Especially DValdron's little vignettes into historical meetings.

[DValdron]

I sometimes find the interplay frustrating, but mostly I enjoy the hell out of it. It's nice to see people engaged, and I am frequently influenced by suggestions or observations.

[TaylorS]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

In my opinion Japan did as well as they did because of fortuitous pre-adaptations; very roughly speaking, Japanese society happened by sheer chance to come close enough to an early modern European sort of organization to adopt European models pretty well. The Thule are quite different but I'm hoping they can do it for very different reasons.

Early Modern Japan has so many parallels with Early Modern Europe it is rather eerie. In both you have a feudal warrior class being turned into an administrative aristocracy under unified bureaucratic states, along with the rise of a proto-Capitalist "middle class".

[RGB]

Originally Posted by fasquardon

-Siberia.

With regards to Russian expansion, the conquest of Siberia wasn't really a concerted push, as it is often portrayed. It was mainly adventurers going across the Urals to trade. The budgets were shoe string. Even when the Tsars became directly involved, the budgets were shoestring and control expanded more because there was a sucking power vacuum rather than a strong desire to push.

One of the most important events in Siberian history was the Chinese annihilation of the Dzungars in the 18th Century. The Dzungars, and the previous steppe empires, had a protection racket going with the Siberian tribes North of them. The Dzungars got a tribute of furs in return for protecting their loyal vassal/allies. When the Dzungars got nobbled, it meant there was no power to resist Russian expansion into Kazakhstan and East Siberia. It also meant, that the Russians could step into the role the Dzungars had played, just as they had in West Siberia after they conquered the Sibir Khanate.

That just isn't all that accurate. While the expeditions were very small, most of the people involved were service-class people (i.e. cossacks, who were normally state employees from northern areas rather than the stereotypical warrior-farmer of the steppe margin) who kept in touch with the bureaucracy in Moscow. In Western Siberia, regular troops followed immediately, as did grain from Europe. The State (shoestring or not) did not often hesitate to appoint the Tsar's relatives as voivodes in Tobolsk. Local elites were PAID in goods (imported in from Russia proper) and salary to enroll in local and regular troops and given titles within the Russian class system within a generation or two. Basically, the State was more than happy that all this could be done on a shoestring, but the idea that this was all tentative and spontaneous is in my opinion the biggest myth regarding the entire affair. The state rarely initiated the push, but it was never more than a step or two behind.

I also find your argument about the Dzungars unconvincing. The Russian movement East was concurrent to Dzungar movement West. The Siege of Albazin happened BEFORE the destruction of Dzungaria. The Russians made incursions into Barguzin lands maybe a few years after the future-Kalmyks crossed the Irtysh. I could maybe agree that the Russian-Dzungar alliance helped secure Russia's steppe flank, and that when the Dzungars were destroyed Russia naturally stepped into their shoes in the southern Altai (into actual Oirot lands), but the fall of Dzungaria isn't going to stop the Russians reaching the Pacific in the 17th c. if everything else goes as OTL.

Of course I did earlier provide some vague redirection possibilities. The Russians could be late to the scene because they are trying to play Khan of Khans in Nogai/Kazakh lands, for example, or got into the Caucasus earlier than normal, or something like that. Create a power vacuum elsewhere and the Russians may be interested in that area more.

Demographics also gives the Thule a huge advantage in dealing with Europe. The European plagues hurt the Europeans almost as bad as they do the natives. But the Europeans could always bring more Europeans from outside the plague zone to fill in the gaps left in the landscape by the decimated Indian tribes. In the Arctic, the Europeans can't really do that. The place is too unpleasant to settle, and the Thule will be too fractious to conquer. Where Europeans do predominate, the Thule package means the Europeans are the ones at a disadvantage. In the North, I reckon it will be the Europeans who find that each plague brings further Thule encroachment.

While European diseases did affect Europeans too, nowhere did they approach the extreme mortality percentages of naive populations (10-30% vs. 60+ (!!!!))

Europeans also didn't have a tradition of living in huddled proximity unless necessary. This reduced the infection to happening household-by-household as opposed to the entire tribe at once. A lot will depend on Thule social organization.

[Pesterfield]

This goes for the agricultural packages of India, the Middle East, China... There is a vast range of stuff we could use, would provide our culture massive benefits, but we aren't interested in. The stuff that has spread, often spreads incompletely - so a plant spreads, but the techniques to get the most out of it don't.

Why are humans apparently so incompetent in this area?

Any way to remove the blinders and get them to realize they need to adopt the whole package?

[Falecius]

Let's not forget that unlike much of the rest of America, the Thule are fighting back with diseases. Bruce is already making its slow way deep into Asia and will add up nicely to syphilis in Europe soon. Mona
has not been covered fully yet, but I expect it causing a hell of a lot of damage to isolated commmunities in places like Iceland, Norway, Northernmost Russia and maybe even Scotland in the future.
Joan we still don't know, but may be a nasty surprise for Europeans.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by fasquardon

Actually half an eye is incredibly useful. Even a tenth of an eye is useful. That is why eyes have evolved so many times - light sensitive cells are a positive adaptation, as are having those cells concentrated in patches, as is having some sort of lens in front of those patches.

You are not the first one to bust me on that, and you probably won't be the last. Conceded.

I think that the point that I was making was that at times, an accumulation of small but significant biological mutations (or cultural practices) can reach a critical mass which produces a sort of tipping point, an apparently radical shift into a new economy or new form of life. For better or worse, I tend to subscribe to the notion of punctuated equilibrium with long periods of apparent stability, followed by short bursts where accumulated stresses, mutations, innovations, etc., produces new forms or paradigms and a new period of apparent stability.

-Domestication.

I am dubious about how fast the Thule go from semi-domestication to domestication.

Welcome to the club. I'm constantly worrying myself and second guessing about how far and how fast I'm pushing the Thule forward.

We are finding that all human societies engage in some form of environmental modification or another. Often it is quite sophisticated, with some qualifying as "quasi-agriculture". An example of this would be the gardens in the Pacific Northwest mentioned earlier in the thread, deer in Europe (which has been intensively managed since at least the Mesolithic) and reindeer herding. Even the Saami, who are the most intensive reindeer herders, have not fully domesticated the reindeer. The border between full agriculture and intensive ecological management is a blurry one. Crossing the border all the way takes alot of cumulative innovations. And even agricultural peoples may continue to do things like manage deer parks, and let the deer do most of the work of taking care of themselves in between hunting seasons.

Let's separate the questions on animal domestication from plant domestication.

-Animals.

In general, animal domestication seems to move through these stages:

(I should note that at any point short of full domestication, individual animals can be tamed. This becomes more likely the more intensive human/animal relations are. Tamed animals are still genetically identical to wild animals, and often there is no concept that the whole SPECIES can be tamed. The relationship is more individual than domestication. So the tamed animal might carry riders, pull sleds, be a pet, heard animals. In more intensive relationships, several tame animals might be kept together with humans, or move between the humans and the wild relatives that the humans are managing.)

1) People leave the animals alone other than hunting them.
2) People start managing the local ecology to favor preferred hunting animals (for example leaving winter feed out for the deer in Mesolithic Scotland, or making laws/customs that limit hunting to particular times or persons, or destroying plants that the favored animal doesn't like, so there is more ecological space for the animal's food sources).
3) People start managing the favored animal intensely. Herding them, corralling them, protecting them (from other humans and from predators), helping the animals care for their young, harvesting them like they would from domestic animals (shearing, milking etc.).
4) All the individuals of the managed species that humans interact with are tame ones, but there is no selective breeding, animals breed with animals owned by other humans or other tribes, or even with wild animals.
5) Full domestication. There is no mixing between the tame animals and wild relatives. Selective breeding can occur as well as the above forms of taming and management. Over time, this means that distinct genetic lineages occur, which can be identified in the skeletons of the animals.

So while Saami today heard their reindeer, and manage them extremely intensely, the reindeer are not domestic animals. There is genetic mixing between Saami-owned reindeer and wild populations. Also, Saami own non-tame reindeer, which are kept in line by the tame reindeer who help them manage their herds. So at most, reindeer OTL are half way between stage (3) and (4). Most reindeer herders are less intensive than the Saami. I should note that reindeer across Eurasia have recently undergone a rapid acceleration towards domestication. Most of this happening in the 20th Century.

Interestingly, all the deer species, reindeer included, seem to be examples of animals that are too good for humans. We have never domesticated them because they are already perfect for what humanity has wanted from them. So while deer have one of the most intertwined histories with humans after that of the dog, no deer species has ever been fully domesticated.

Going from stage (1) to (3) can happen very quickly indeed - within one human generation. (4) can happen a short time after (3), in a couple generations to a couple centuries. But going from (4) to (5) takes very long. In horses, that seems to have taken about 2000 years.

So I am extremely skeptical of the fully domestic reindeer you propose (or caribou if you prefer) with selective breeding occurring almost immediately after the Thule first start herding them.

Reindeer are quite independent animals. Yes, they are naturally docile and approach humans closely (even wild reindeer will let humans milk them), but they like to go where they wish. So they are difficult to selectively breed for that reason. Also, all the human reindeer management systems of OTL basically involve following the reindeer's natural migrations. Now I am not sure if this independence is something reindeer NEED or that humans have never found inconvenient enough to resist.

That's quite interesting and very well thought out, so I hope you don't mind my reproducing the entirety of your thoughts before making my own comments.

I think at the outset, its important to remember that our discussion here is almost entirely theoretical. Horse, camel, water buffalo, cattle, llama, reindeer, these are all real animals of course.

But almost all major modern domestications date back thousands of years to pre-literate societies in remote corners of the world. We don't actually have a lot of hard direct data. Mostly, we don't have witnesses or any kind of direct history. Instead, we have a lot of inferences and guesswork working backwards based on present experience with established dometicates and interpretations of archeological records which may or may not be definitive, some recent cases and experimentation and of course, we have theory, lots and lots of theory.

I've kicked it around a lot, and listened to a lot of the theory, and I've got my own ideas over how it works. Increasingly though, I'm persuaded that there may be more than one path to domestication, even in similar categories of animal.

I had a minor dispute on another thread with someone who suggested that migratory animals couldn't be domesticated. I suggested that it was likely that a couple of the key big domesticates were migrators - horse and cattle. But clearly, other big domesticates were not migrators - water buffalo, maybe yak, maybe camel. The point, it's hard to draw a general principle.

For instance, there's a general proposition that animal domestication follows agriculture, and that domestication is the product of agricultural societies. Intuitively that feels right. But then, what do we make of the domestication or semi-domestication of the reindeer, a big draft animal in an explicitly non-agricultural society. How well does that model work for camels. Does the prevalence of horse domestication in non-agricultural societies like the Mongols or Plains Indians suggest the possibility that original domestication might have been by non-agriculturals.

The limited scope of modern domestications offers little answer. The only modern domestication of something that could have made a draft animal was probably the Ostrich in South Africa in the 19th century. But this was done by a settler society that had a surplus of powerful effective draft animals superior to the Ostrich - even their lesser draft animals, goats, sheep, etc. were competitive.

Ostrich domestication is really a complete WTF case when looked at from both angles. On one side, its been co-existing with humans in southern africa for thousands of years without ever domesticating. On the other side, its domesticated by a settler culture which really doesn't have any compelling need for it (sure, a few feathers, a few eggs, some nice leather, meat - but almost nothing that they didn't already have or couldn't obtain.) It suggests that there's more complexity here than we recognize and the process may be considerably more hit or miss.

You've set out an interesting list of criteria, or perhaps a sequence of progression to describe domestication. I'm not exactly taking issue with it. I'd happily assume that some, perhaps most, domestications follow the sequence you describe. I'd be hesitant to say that they all do.

But I think that the sequence misses a couple of things. One is mutualism, the tendency of the animal species, or representatives within the species to become habitually tolerant of humans. Some do, some don't.

But the more important aspect, I would stress, is the available economic role of the animal in a human culture. We domesticate or manage or establish some relationship with a species for a reason, there is some benefit or role that we find, or perhaps that both sides find which then defines the role of the animal in the context of domestication

So let's look at it in a practical sense: The Sammi have only achieved limited domestication of the Reindeer, call it semi-domestication.

Now, my question is: Is this all the domestication that the reindeer/caribou are capable of? Or is that all the domestication that the Sammi actually need from their Reindeer?

The Sammi are a non-agricultural society. Their environment does not allow for the possibility of agriculture in OTL (setting aside the possibility that a Thule package could be realistically viable). They don't need reindeer to pull plows. Up until modern times, they didn't have the material commitment of a settled culture so they didn't have the volume of goods to transport. Their environment was short on plant resources, favoured meat production, so the Sammi embraced a lifestyle and form of domestication which maximized Reindeer in an environment where free range worked best.

The Sammi and Reindeer are a pretty perfect fit, in that the Reindeer are just enough domesticated or semi-domesticated to meet the Reindeer's needs.

But how does that perfect fit come about? Who met who half way? Is this truly as far as you can take reindeer? The limit of their domesticability, and the Sammi have adapted themselves to it. Or is this a situation where the Sammi culture, in its environment, makes economic choices and the reindeer are fit into those limits?

I think that your view is that Reindeer have gone just about as far as they can manage to go.

My own view is that Reindeer/Caribou have enough demonstrated flexibility that with a different social matrix, an agricultural society, they can go a lot further.

Now, in terms of going from stage 4 to 5, you're arguing quite a long time, 2000 years for horses. I'd argue generally for a shorter phase.

One thing to keep in mind is that animal generations are considerably shorter. A two hundred year span represents at least 50 caribou or reindeer generations.

I'd also reference your own comment as to the acceleration of reindeer domestication in the 20th century - ie, suddenly, after centuries or millenia of relative stability, things are changing and the pace is picked up dramatically. Obviously, there's different ways to look at it, but I'd tend to argue that the change is due to cultural shifts among the humand rather than biological diffusion among the reindeer.

Either way, I'd suggest the time spans are a lot shorter.

You're also making a fairly general comment about wild and domesticated species becoming divergent. Again, I concurr generally, but I have to load on a bunch of caveats. For instance there are the matters of habitat encroachment and active hunting practices.

So, is it really the case that the domestic species begins to differ markedly from the wild species? Or is it that the wild specimens in a region that overlaps with tame specimens get wiped out. Their habitat is pushed out, their wild populations are hunted. If there is a survival, it may be a survival of a genetically distinct subspecies or unrelated population.

There simply are no such things as wild horses left, only domestic horses gone feral. How do we then match the characteristics of wild and domestic populations when the wild population is gone. Same thing with cattle and auroch.

I'm just throwing it out there. I do recognize and accept that domesticated populations change, that with notable exceptions we see more and more retention of juvenile characteristics, reduction in size, and often magnification of traits (wool, milk, etc.) that humans find desirable.

So, while I respect your strong skepticism on the subject, I think that we'll have to agree to disagree.

I respect that your views are thought out and well considered, and I hope to have the same dignity accorded my own.

I am very skeptical of reindeer cavalry as well. Reindeer don't run as fast at top speed and they aren't as stupid as horses (very important for any animal you want to charge into battle for you). Not to say they wouldn't have military uses, either being ridden, or carrying packs or pulling sleds. We might see reindeer "dragoons", where the Thule warriors dismount to do the actual fighting.

Yeah, don't get me started on that.

It's riding you see. Everyone is so fond of horses that when you start talking draft animals, well, they want to ride them. There's ASB threads around here where people fantasize about Ostrich riding cultures or Bird riding cultures, buffalo riders, Ultra-llama riders, etc.

The reality is that riding horses was a fairly recent development historically. Mostly, horses originally pulled carts. The Hittites made their name, not with their equestrianship, but the quality and lightness of their chariots.

But in the last couple of thousand years, cavalry has made a very big name for itself - Mongols, Knights, Indians. So it's kind of inescapable.

With Caribou/Reindeer, people actually do ride the goddammed things, and there's even some literature that suggests that Reindeer riding may have contributed somewhat to the success of the Evenks.

So I'm kind of stuck fighting a rearguard action. There will be Caribou riders. There will be Caribou cavalry of some sort. But you might notice me tossing buckets of cold water on the notion.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by fasquardon

I am very skeptical of reindeer cavalry as well. Reindeer don't run as fast at top speed and they aren't as stupid as horses.

I do have to caveat one point. Horses aren't stupid. If you've been around enough horses, you'll know that. They're mean. Mean, ornery and hateful. That's what people overlook what with those big brown eyes. They have a mean streak. A favoured entertainment of the Norse was watching horses fight each other. A horse will readily charge into battle because on some level in the back of its vicious little mind, the thought that its rider could be killed is more important than its own life.

For the other animal domesticates, the only ones that I can see plausibly being subjected to noticeable amounts of selective breeding are the ptarmigan, and possibly the arctic hare, if the Thule can make pens good enough to control the hares' movements.

I'm half dubious about Hare myself. They're tougher. That's why I had them as a secondary microlivestock. Once people get the idea of doing ptarmigans as a microlivestock, it generalizes a bit and people start trying to make Arctic Hare work. A lot more effort, a lot more experimentation on a wider area, and sooner or later they figure it out.

Why no love for Musk Ox?

I like the idea of tame stellar's sea cows - they seem to be tailor made for domestication from what we know of them, so long as the Thule can figure out how to overcome their apparent habit of staying in the water for their whole lives.

Everyone loves the idea of domesticating the sea cows. I'm probably going to have to try and do it as one of those fanservice things, like Caribou Cavalry or Shevek's Mountain Thule.

I'm not so sure that they would be a good domesticate. I can't put my hand on a reference, but my impression is that they were probably a slow growing population. Given their size, diet and activity levels, it might have taken them a decade or more to reach maturity, and they probably reproduced fairly slowly, a single calf with a long weaning season where the mother is out of the breeding pool.

Take Manatees and Dugongs. Long lives, up to 60 years or better. Slow maturity, 8 to 18 years. Slow breeders, no more often than every second year. Gestation takes 12 to 15 months, and the calf weans for up to 18 months. So realistically, a Manatee or Dugong-Mama who is just chugging them out is probably reproducing only once every three years. The Walrus are a more limited standard of comparison, because they're not directly related. But again, you've got a slow maturity, four to seven years. Gestation of 16 months.

I wonder how comfortable sea cows would be in underwater pens... Maybe the Thule would have stone corrals in the shallows near the kelp forests.

Why bother. Just figure out a way to protect them from killer whales, sharks, polar bears, teenagers, etc. Actually, polar bears preying on the young might be the biggest threats.

Stellar's sea cows apparently didn't deal well with sea urchins. One of the theories for their decline is that hunting of otters allowed the sea urchin population to explode in the kelp forests the sea cows fed from.

I've heard that. I'm more the 'hunt to extinction' type myself. The trouble with slow reproducers is that they're very good in stable environments, but anything that ups the mortality rate can really mess them up.

This TL might see sea otters being managed to a low degree to make sure the kelp pastures of the tame sea cows were urchin free. I'm not thinking of anything very intensive, just taboos against hunting sea otters too much, and Thule looking after their local otter raft during winter to make sure more pups survive their first winter (winter mortality among pups is very high).

Nice. Very nice. And consistent with management of other semi-domesticates.

I can see both walruses and seals becoming managed animals - potentially even intensively managed animals. I don't think either animal would be easy to tame though.

Walrus far more than seal. Walrus reproduction rates make them vulnerable to local extinction, or extinction period. There's lots of places around where there used to be Walrus and aren't any more.

Which is a shame because they're a benthic predator accessing and growing on a food source that nothing else really makes use of. I think in the timeline, we're moving into a period where some Thule are going to start managing and rebuilding the population.

But unless I'm on heavy drugs, they won't be riding animals.

Although, now that I think of it, they're probably one of the few pinnipeds big enough to ride like a horse.

No! Let's not go there.

Would reaching the seal breeding sites on ice floes really be so hard for the Thule? They have decent seagoing technology, and could probably maintain fishing and polar bear killing camps on the floes for at least long enough to have some impact on reducing pup mortality.

Seals are really fast breeders, a lot less intervention required.

Puffins sound like they would make a terrible domesticate. That doesn't mean that the Thule wouldn't manage them. Carving out sheltered rookeries for the puffins and then managing the harvest from the rookery would have a much greater payoff/investment ratio than fully domesticating them.

Yep. Much more a managed or aggressively managed species than a domesticated one.

Moose, like most deer species, are almost tailor made for association with humans.

I resisted Moose as a domesticate because I thought that was gilding the lilly. We already had three powerhouse draft domesticates. That's an astonishing level of horsepower for neolithics. Just overkill.

But there's a very interesting site on recent moose domestication experiments:

http://www.moosefarm.newmail.ru/e000.htm

There's actually a fair bit of literature on the subject, both historical records and 20th century experiments if you look for it.

For me, the thing that I find most striking about the Moose farm experiments is how rapidly divergent populations emerged. ie - that within about three generations you started to see some of the moose habitually hanging around the farm, and some that just went into the woods and didn't look back.

They have the advantage of having wider diets than reindeer, and larger size, so I think it is very likely that the Thule will come to manage their local moose herds,

Just a note. Moose aren't highly social herd animals. Small groups at most. Basically, different lifestyle.

and will often tame individual moose for riding and labour. We may even see moose being traded up into the North lands of the Thule, much like Indians would trade elephants with the Mediterranean world. Having a riding moose or a plow moose might be a big status symbol among the Thule, much like horses were a status symbol for Arabs.

Moose can also metabolize alcohol. So we might see battle moose being used akin to elephants in classical times, where the moose would be gotten drunk, and aimed at the enemy. Could make a good shock tactic. Sober moose are even smarter than reindeer though, so there would be no likelihood of getting them into battle like you would a horse.

Those are very interesting thoughts.

In time, like reindeer, I think it is inevitable that moose would become full domesticates for the Thule. But I can't see there just isn't enough time for that to happen.

I'm still resisting it. Moose are more boreal than sub-arctic, and not at all arctic.

I got my arm twisted into accepting Moose (basically the arguments for it were coming faster than I could shoot them down). But its a late development in southern or local regions, and its not well established enough that it survives the epidemics.

Also, with both reindeer and moose, the velvet that covers their antlers while they grow has is quite nutritious. Reindeer, since they grow their horns again every year, are good velvet producers. Might be a big mainstay of Thule medicine.

I've heard that. Quite a good idea.

[RGB]

Originally Posted by DValdron

I do have to caveat one point. Horses aren't stupid. If you've been around enough horses, you'll know that. They're mean. Mean, ornery and hateful. That's what people overlook what with those big brown eyes. They have a mean streak. A favoured entertainment of the Norse was watching horses fight each other. A horse will readily charge into battle because on some level in the back of its vicious little mind, the thought that its rider could be killed is more important than its own life.

They're mean, yes. But they are also easily convinced that their rider is meaner than they are. Basically like dogs.

I'm half dubious about Hare myself. They're tougher. That's why I had them as a secondary microlivestock. Once people get the idea of doing ptarmigans as a microlivestock, it generalizes a bit and people start trying to make Arctic Hare work. A lot more effort, a lot more experimentation on a wider area, and sooner or later they figure it out.

I'm extremey super-duper skeptical, honestly. They are not animals that live in warrens or colonies. They are relatively aggressive and tough. They cover large distances in their daily routines. They are born knowing to run away. They are hyper-evovled survivalists, basically, unlike the domesticateable rabbits (also nasty animals all in all).

I would almost say that domesticating the hare is harder than most small predators. And you're definitely better off herding seals I think, for the amount of return you'll get.

EDIT: Absolute yes on the deer velvet. Big trade item in Siberia.

[FDW]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

Obviously we have different approaches to understanding these things and will disagree due to differing perspectives.

I believe the peculiar circumstances you stress may account for why and how Europe reconfigured to capitalism, but once this transition took place the basic drive sustained them; the new state system in particular I see as part of capitalism's superstructure. And sustained technological innovation is both driven and enabled by capitalism and helps prevent alternatives to capitalism being implemented.

So, given that the alternatives caused by the Thule evolutions don't drastically affect developments in Europe's core much yet, the perturbations caused by their spread into Europe will merely feed into the general processes and augment them. And I hope the Thule as given here will be peculiarly well able to absorb the European package and fit themselves into the developing new global system.

In my opinion Japan did as well as they did because of fortuitous pre-adaptations; very roughly speaking, Japanese society happened by sheer chance to come close enough to an early modern European sort of organization to adopt European models pretty well. The Thule are quite different but I'm hoping they can do it for very different reasons.

Yeah, we disagree here. The thing is, I don't subscribe to the "Killer App" version of historical events, where there's one idea, concept or person that explains every historical event, I'm more of a "Critical Mass" type of person. What you see as a superstructure evolving I see a synergy of several different separate components evolving concurrently, but not always working with each other in a unified manner. And to be honest, I see your idea of European history being based as rather narrow and "Classical", and not really acknowledging that while Mercantilism (and the zero-sum politics that result from it) doesn't work for economics, it certainly plays a huge role in geopolitics.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by fasquardon

-Plants.

I do wonder how much selection they'd be able to apply to their crops though. When do they make the division between "good plant" and "good patch"? From the way their crops grow in the wild, it seems that "good patch" would be something intuitively grasped, but recognizing a good plant in that patch and finding ways to separate that plant's offspring from others might be a harder step to make.

True. It's a fairly intuitive process. Remember though that a large part of Thule pre-agricultural processes tends to involve replanting of cuttings. Seeds and seed exchange comes a bit later.

Most of the key Thule plants reproduce vegetatively, ie, through extension of their root systems. So that makes it a bit easier of intuitive ad hoc selections to proliferate. You're cutting out an intermediate step, and just replanting based on how impressed you are about the root that you pull up.

Because most of the arctic plants reproduce vegetatively, most of the plants in a particular patch will tend to be closely related to each other, if not genetically identical. This makes it easy for intuitively desirable traits to be identified and proliferated.

Plant genetics is also very unpredictable. Sometimes good plants might not give good offspring from their seeds. The Thule crops that can be propagated vegitatively will have to worry about this less of course. But the Thule crops may be essentially the same for thousands of years, or they may see one or two enormous leaps with random-seeming timings when advantageous hybridizations occur, or gradual cumulative improvement. It is very hard to say. Knowing more about the plants genetics would tell us something.

I agree that genetics are quite unpredictable. But when you've got literally hundreds of thousands of ad hoc experience going on over half a million square miles over a century, you can probably produce some interesting results. The Shamanic traditions make it more likely that positive results will tend to spread.

Overall, because Bistort and Sweetvetch are already widely distributed, my expectation is that we'd see steady gradual improvement happening fairly quickly.

Something like Claytonia, which had a very limited range in Alaska and the Yukon is going to have a lot less regional variety, so you will tend to the 'big leaps' thing. Claytonia may actually see more progressive improvement as the Thule move into Siberia where the plant has a much larger range.

And how easy is it to control the seed spread of their crops? I noticed alot of them had wind-borne seeds, but on the other hand, the micro-climates might mean those crops don't experience enough wind...

Good question. For obvious reasons, domesticating windborne seeders are problematic down south. They're less so here, in part because microclimates. But its less of a problem overall, simply because the arctic environment is so harsh and unforgiving, its a natural containment system.

In some cases, like Fireweed (I believe, I'll have to double check) these plants only diverge to domestic varieties because the microclimates extend them outside their natural range. The further south you go, the harder it becomes to keep Fireweed from 'breeding back' with wild varieties.

Also, how easy is it to control the plants' genetic exchange? I can't remember seeing much discussion on what plants were wind or insect pollinated. It is generally difficult to control plant pollination, but if the Thule can control that, it will help them exert more selective pressure on their plants.

A surprising number of arctic plants are flowering pollinators. Again, I'd say the nature of the arctic enviroment and microclimate agriculture means that the recurring tendency is for populations tending toward uniformity, with continuing infusions of new genetic material occurring as a result of human transmission, and the sharing/spread given ceremonially through Shamanic mediations. (Next time, I'll say that in English.)

From the sounds of the plant biology you have described and the nature of Thule civilization (i.e. extensive and with good communications), I'd expect the main crops to be like potatoes and brassicas and to diversify into thousands of varieties, some of which may be as distinct as the turnip is from the broccoli or the mustard are from each-other. None of those may be particularly better yielding than the wild varieties. Or there may be a couple of serendipitous events resulting in leaps like Europe made when it crossed the Chilean wild strawberry with the North American wild strawberry and produced the garden strawberry.

Not bad. But keep in mind the 'Johnny Appleseed' tradition of Thule Shaman's obtaining, preserving and trading cuttings and seed pods which keeps mixing populations. The status of such gifts will not be neutral - ie, any old seed pod will do, but ones taken from crops with notable 'magic' ie, some quality such as yield, resistance to cold, tolerance for drought, rapid growth... Those will spread, successful crosses will continue to spread.

Anyway, enough for now....

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by RGB

I would almost say that domesticating the hare is harder than most small predators. And you're definitely better off herding seals I think, for the amount of return you'll get.

That's why they have a status as vermin as well as late microlivestock. There was a lot of effort that got put into them.