A group of Inuit while relocating for better hunting,End up in Northern Canada.Basing themselves within visual range of A forest,They often venture near to&inside the forest while hunting.The abundance of wood&wildlife is A resource they dont neglect.One day A member of the tribe accidently creates A mix of wood ash&dense snow/ice.It is later discovered with the arrival of warmer weather that it does not melt.With the recipe for Pyrcrete now known&spreading to other tribes,What will the future hold?
WI: Inuit's in Northern Canada developed Pyrcrete in the 1200's?
- Thread starter omnimercurial
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It could be made to make VERY strong shelters in winter. It is as solid as concrete before it melts which isn't a problem in winter.
Plain old ice and snow seem to work pretty well (see: igloo) and are much more readily at hand
This is stronger . Igloos have a relatively small living space for its mass. This stuff is about as strong as concrete so you can get a whole lot more living space for the same amount of mass. So you can build larger, more roomy buildings.
The only advantage vs. plain ice/show would seem to be in roof beams, but you could also use plain wood for that job, and if you're going to make pykrete you need wood anyhow... so again any advantage seems very very slim. Really, just seems like a waste of scarce wood.
Now if you want to talk Hitler building a pykrete invasion fleet I'm game
The only advantage vs. plain ice/show would seem to be in roof beams, but you could also use plain wood for that job, and if you're going to make pykrete you need wood anyhow... so again any advantage seems very very slim. Really, just seems like a waste of scarce wood.
Now if you want to talk Hitler building a pykrete invasion fleet I'm game
Won't work for the fleet idea . Pykrete eventually melts, it takes longer but it melts. But as far as housing goes it is much stronger than even wood. So you will need to use considerably less wood to make the same house.
Igloos are also temporary shelters. The Inuit used caribou skin and bones to build tents as a more "permanent" shelter, especially in summer.
Dunno anything about building ice houses in the arctic, but I assume all you need wood for is trusses, and then you can use cut snow for the bulk of the roof. Seems much less hassle than somehow chipping the wood and forming it into moulds (of what?) with fresh water (from where?) to make roof panels?
Re: the half-joking sealion thing, perhaps the nazis make a whole slow of cheap pykrete rafts in Norway, and tow them along the coast to the staging area in France. It doesn't solve the problem of the Royal Navy, but it would sort out their landing craft needs in a VERY economical and rapid way.
Re: the half-joking sealion thing, perhaps the nazis make a whole slow of cheap pykrete rafts in Norway, and tow them along the coast to the staging area in France. It doesn't solve the problem of the Royal Navy, but it would sort out their landing craft needs in a VERY economical and rapid way.
If you could build pyrcrete refrigerated bunkers, you could probably store larger quantities of fish and game and perhaps plants longer. Larger, more stable population? Reduction of famine bottlenecks?
With a larger population based around pyrcrete storage and a stable year long food surplus, you'd probably see shifts in migration patterns. Basically, some hunter/gatherers would simply have to stay closer to their pyrcrete silos year round, to protect them from rivals and vermin. This could play out in several different ways.
You might, for instance, have networks of pyrcrete silos, and tribes or clans spreading out among them.
Or inuit might be more compact and territorial, harvesting within a given resource area more intensively. This might open the door to things like horticulture or low yield arctic agriculture - cloudberries and things like that, or perhaps domestication or semi-domestication of some arctic birds or mammals.
Not out of the question, the Lapps domesticated the reindeer for instance. The inuit arguably have two big domesticates available. The Caribou who are largely identical to reindeer and theoretically as domesticatable and the Musk-Ox. The Inuit never domesticated caribou because their nomadic foraging lifestyle took them well out of reindeer country on a regular basis hunting seals and fishing.
But if you gave the inuit a viable economic reason to stay year round in caribou country, controlling a territory, and able to preserve food year round, then you might well see domestication events in some places.
If we assume that there's domestications of caribou and musk ox, then we might see a more broadly distributed use of animal labour, even seasonally beyond normal habitats.
And you might also see significant diversity in food gathering systems. There might be coastal inuit continuing to survive on seals, whales and fish, with inland inuit building economies based on herding large domesticates, raising small domesticates and some forms of horticulture or even agriculture.
From there, you could see trading networks forming between different groups, territorial battles and conflicts, the emergence of fortifications, and pseudo-megaliths and perhaps even the elements of a proto-civilization.
With a larger population based around pyrcrete storage and a stable year long food surplus, you'd probably see shifts in migration patterns. Basically, some hunter/gatherers would simply have to stay closer to their pyrcrete silos year round, to protect them from rivals and vermin. This could play out in several different ways.
You might, for instance, have networks of pyrcrete silos, and tribes or clans spreading out among them.
Or inuit might be more compact and territorial, harvesting within a given resource area more intensively. This might open the door to things like horticulture or low yield arctic agriculture - cloudberries and things like that, or perhaps domestication or semi-domestication of some arctic birds or mammals.
Not out of the question, the Lapps domesticated the reindeer for instance. The inuit arguably have two big domesticates available. The Caribou who are largely identical to reindeer and theoretically as domesticatable and the Musk-Ox. The Inuit never domesticated caribou because their nomadic foraging lifestyle took them well out of reindeer country on a regular basis hunting seals and fishing.
But if you gave the inuit a viable economic reason to stay year round in caribou country, controlling a territory, and able to preserve food year round, then you might well see domestication events in some places.
If we assume that there's domestications of caribou and musk ox, then we might see a more broadly distributed use of animal labour, even seasonally beyond normal habitats.
And you might also see significant diversity in food gathering systems. There might be coastal inuit continuing to survive on seals, whales and fish, with inland inuit building economies based on herding large domesticates, raising small domesticates and some forms of horticulture or even agriculture.
From there, you could see trading networks forming between different groups, territorial battles and conflicts, the emergence of fortifications, and pseudo-megaliths and perhaps even the elements of a proto-civilization.
I checked out Pykrete on Wikipedia, but there was fairly little to be said about its resistance to melting. Still, that would seem to me to be the most critical application.
Just poking around on the subject of potential land based domesticates....
* Caribou seem to be the best prospect given the example of Reindeer in Lappland.
* Musk-Ox also seem to be decent candidates. Possibly better in some ways. Strongly gregarious and hierarchical, tending to cluster like sheep, not nearly as migratory as Caribou.
* Arctic Ptarmigan - Potentially the chicken of the north. Year round arctic resident (as opposed to most arctic birds who are migratory). Social. No real predators apart from the Golden Eagle. Wikipedia notes that they're surprisingly approachable by humans.
* Arctic Hare - Eight to twelve pounds, herbivore, fast growing, large litters, very social. The only downside is that the little bastards are fast and hard to catch. But potentially a viable domesticate.
So, throw in Dogs, there seems to be a reasonable suite of potential domesticates that could provide labour, food, leather, feathers milk and eggs, in a reasonable set of sizes. You could work with this stuff.
There's also this: Mousefood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousefood
Potentially, this could be the basis of a form of food raising based on 'farming voles' to act as collectors. Conceivably, you'd select or encourage vole friendly plants to grow in an area if possible, and perhaps engineer the vole dens for easier access. Given the general sparseness of the Arctic ecology and the very short growing season, it might well represent a viable technique. It's pretty unique though, the closest thing we'd come to would be beekeeping.
In terms of actual domesticable edible plants, the best bets would be the cloudberries, as well as crowberries and cranberries.
There's also the 'eskimo potato', an edible northern root.
Here's a more elaborate article on the plant. Among other qualities - seems to thrive in disturbed or poor soils, a pioneer plant, which suggests it would take pretty readily to aggressive cultivation. The topside or leafy side of the plant seems to make good forage for black bears, moose, and caribou. The roots are primarily devoured by humans or grizzly bears, the two animals strong enough to dig it up. Protein levels are at their highest early and late in the growing season, and lowest when flowering, the plant can also be harvested in the winter. In some areas, makes up an important part of the diet or back up food source for humans. There are a variety of ways to cook it, and it can be stored for long periods of time. There's a tradition in Alaska of cutting off and re-burying the thickest top part of the root to encourage regrowth. It's a perrenial, so it would probably take a couple of years to grow a significant tuber. But you could make something with this....
http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/forb/hedalp/all.html
So overall, it seems possible that you might be able to put together a suite of plant and animal domesticated that would make intensive use of various arctic and subarctic biomes, and might amount to a viable food package.
This is ignoring, of course, the sea potential of whales, seals, fish, puffin and mollusks, and whether there are any offshore or near shore domestication or intensive harvesting opportunities.
It would be utterly cool if the Inuit managed to domesticate the Stellar's Sea Cow, though I think unlikely. Still, who knows, a docile animal, select for smaller size, faster breeding, protect from predators and keep transplanting its food plants to any secluded cove or bay you'd think that they'd grow... stranger things have happened.
Even with all of this, you wouldn't get population densities anywhere near the maximum potentials you'd find in southern areas. But you might get a reasonable if light population density if the Inuit were exploiting close to their maximum yields.
Of course, for that level of complexity - an Inuit civilization, you'd have to set your POD further back.
But it could be cool. Anyone feel like pulling a Jared?
* Caribou seem to be the best prospect given the example of Reindeer in Lappland.
* Musk-Ox also seem to be decent candidates. Possibly better in some ways. Strongly gregarious and hierarchical, tending to cluster like sheep, not nearly as migratory as Caribou.
* Arctic Ptarmigan - Potentially the chicken of the north. Year round arctic resident (as opposed to most arctic birds who are migratory). Social. No real predators apart from the Golden Eagle. Wikipedia notes that they're surprisingly approachable by humans.
* Arctic Hare - Eight to twelve pounds, herbivore, fast growing, large litters, very social. The only downside is that the little bastards are fast and hard to catch. But potentially a viable domesticate.
So, throw in Dogs, there seems to be a reasonable suite of potential domesticates that could provide labour, food, leather, feathers milk and eggs, in a reasonable set of sizes. You could work with this stuff.
There's also this: Mousefood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousefood
Potentially, this could be the basis of a form of food raising based on 'farming voles' to act as collectors. Conceivably, you'd select or encourage vole friendly plants to grow in an area if possible, and perhaps engineer the vole dens for easier access. Given the general sparseness of the Arctic ecology and the very short growing season, it might well represent a viable technique. It's pretty unique though, the closest thing we'd come to would be beekeeping.
In terms of actual domesticable edible plants, the best bets would be the cloudberries, as well as crowberries and cranberries.
There's also the 'eskimo potato', an edible northern root.
Here's a more elaborate article on the plant. Among other qualities - seems to thrive in disturbed or poor soils, a pioneer plant, which suggests it would take pretty readily to aggressive cultivation. The topside or leafy side of the plant seems to make good forage for black bears, moose, and caribou. The roots are primarily devoured by humans or grizzly bears, the two animals strong enough to dig it up. Protein levels are at their highest early and late in the growing season, and lowest when flowering, the plant can also be harvested in the winter. In some areas, makes up an important part of the diet or back up food source for humans. There are a variety of ways to cook it, and it can be stored for long periods of time. There's a tradition in Alaska of cutting off and re-burying the thickest top part of the root to encourage regrowth. It's a perrenial, so it would probably take a couple of years to grow a significant tuber. But you could make something with this....
http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/forb/hedalp/all.html
So overall, it seems possible that you might be able to put together a suite of plant and animal domesticated that would make intensive use of various arctic and subarctic biomes, and might amount to a viable food package.
This is ignoring, of course, the sea potential of whales, seals, fish, puffin and mollusks, and whether there are any offshore or near shore domestication or intensive harvesting opportunities.
It would be utterly cool if the Inuit managed to domesticate the Stellar's Sea Cow, though I think unlikely. Still, who knows, a docile animal, select for smaller size, faster breeding, protect from predators and keep transplanting its food plants to any secluded cove or bay you'd think that they'd grow... stranger things have happened.
Even with all of this, you wouldn't get population densities anywhere near the maximum potentials you'd find in southern areas. But you might get a reasonable if light population density if the Inuit were exploiting close to their maximum yields.
Of course, for that level of complexity - an Inuit civilization, you'd have to set your POD further back.
But it could be cool. Anyone feel like pulling a Jared?
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Would you need to use wood or woodchips for Pykrete? Could you substitute say Muskeg or Bog plants and get similar results?
What's the maximum you could retart the melting of Pykrete. Suppose you manufactured a lot of Pykrete blocks and then used them to build a recessed bunker in the ground. Could you manufacture a cold storage ice room to last the whole summer?
What's the maximum you could retart the melting of Pykrete. Suppose you manufactured a lot of Pykrete blocks and then used them to build a recessed bunker in the ground. Could you manufacture a cold storage ice room to last the whole summer?
An igloo is only ice and snow, a small one can be made in half an hour by skilled workers, an hour or two (I believe) for a family size one.
They wanted them fairly small to help with heating. The main heating source was the human body and oil lamps. If the igloo was too large they'd freeze, the small size made the igloo a comfortable temperature. At least by Inuit standards.Johnrankins said:
Pretty much.