These two I think have the best chance of spreading, Cattail and Arrowhead can be found wild pretty much continent wide.
The problem is the time for the the idea of cultivation and domesticated versions to spread.
Last edited:
Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule
- Thread starter DirtyCommie
- Start date
- Status
The problem is the time for the the idea of cultivation and domesticated versions to spread.
We should note though, that iOTL it took 2-300 hundred years for the Anglo-Normans to move to speaking English as a first language (depending on what study you believe), and that the Thule Shamanic tradition will serve to bind the "Tinglo-Thule" upper class closer to the broader Thule culture and language than we might expect, as there are significant religio-cultural reasons why it's seen as important to be part of the Thule speaking world, as it links you into the trade and information exchange networks.
I'd actually use Arabic in North Africa as a model here, rather than French in England, because of this. If you want to be a shaman/partake of the sacred knowledge, you need to speak Thule, so there's a very strong incentive to learn.
Here's a question for you all. Why weren't cattail domesticated OTL?
Well the reason their wearn't any agriculture from what Jared sayed in his timeline was becouse their wearn't any founder crops. I assume the same problem is with the cattails.
Hmmm. Not sufficient I think. I'm inclined to think it may be a propagation issue. Anyone else?
IMHO, they grow so well that no one saw any need to do anything for them. anyone who lived near a wetland could easily go out and gather as much as wanted.
A site on cattail propogation: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/graminoid/typlat/all.html
It also had this:
Cattail and Arrowhead(at least plants in the same genus and edible) are both also found in Europe. So why didn't anybody over there take advantage.
Both like land that isn't good for anything else really.
It also had this:
Cattail and Arrowhead(at least plants in the same genus and edible) are both also found in Europe. So why didn't anybody over there take advantage.
Both like land that isn't good for anything else really.
Last edited:
Pester field!!! Welcome back!
It appears that cattail roots were gathered and ground int flour 30,000 years ago. Maybe it's a historical fluke. Maybe what took off was dry land agriculture in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus. And that precluded wetlands agro?
It appears that cattail roots were gathered and ground int flour 30,000 years ago. Maybe it's a historical fluke. Maybe what took off was dry land agriculture in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus. And that precluded wetlands agro?
Maybe harvesting effort was greater? Or maybe expanding cultivation wouuld have required wetland engineering?
Could looking at rice help? Are there any other major aquatic agricultural plants, if not why not and why did Asia decide on rice?
The cattail really seems a major missed opportunity, from the sites I've seen there isn't a part of it you can't use for something.
The cattail really seems a major missed opportunity, from the sites I've seen there isn't a part of it you can't use for something.
FDW
Banned
Rice became LOL HUEG in Asia because of it's God Tier yields. Using Wet-field agriculture, you could get something like 5 times the yield of Wheat Barley or Millet.
So why didn't cattail catch on, I've seen over and over claims of 6,000ish pounds of flour per acre.
And 140 tons of rhizomes per acre.
And 140 tons of rhizomes per acre.
You can also ferment cattail flour, and the romans apparently did it.
Making paper with cattails also got a few hits.
During WW2 a survey was done that found the U.S. had 140 thousand square miles of swampland with cattail stands of various densities.
A newspaper story from 1954 about the many uses of cattail: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...=Uw1ZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UkYNAAAAIBAJ&pg=955,800033
An article on cattail use by the Salish of British Columbia: http://ethnobiology.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/JoE/21-2/Ostapkowicz-etal.pdf
Making paper with cattails also got a few hits.
During WW2 a survey was done that found the U.S. had 140 thousand square miles of swampland with cattail stands of various densities.
A newspaper story from 1954 about the many uses of cattail: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...=Uw1ZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UkYNAAAAIBAJ&pg=955,800033
An article on cattail use by the Salish of British Columbia: http://ethnobiology.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/JoE/21-2/Ostapkowicz-etal.pdf
Last edited:
Here's an idea:
According to (http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/graminoid/typlat/all.html), cattails have a fairly narrow tolerance for soil moisture, and in fact require different levels of water at different seasons. They require standing water less than 40 inches to grow, but young plants die when water levels rise above 20 inches, and for the plants to flower, the roots need to be exposed to air. (I'm simplifying, but you can see the real numbers in the link). On the other hand, while they can survive in drained soil temporarily, cattails will die after two seasons of drought.
To make matters worse, cattails transform the environments they colonize. Their roots bind mud and their stems slow water movement and increase deposition. Water becomes shallower and (as the cattails use nutrients) poorer, and cattails loose out to grass (http://soils.ifas.ufl.edu/wetlands/... cattail abundance in northern everglades.pdf)
So you can't find or plant a cattail marsh and depend on its continuous existence. Even in optimal water conditions, the very fact that cattails are growing there means that the environment will soon become impossible for cattails.
Without extensive intervention (i.e. dredging), a productive cattail marsh becomes an unproductive patch of grass. I'm willing to bet that the amount of grunt-work needed to dredge out several tons of mud and vegetable litter from a cattail farm every ten years or so would be too much for proto-agriculturalists...unless they had domesticated mammoths
Here's an idea:
According to (http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/graminoid/typlat/all.html), cattails have a fairly narrow tolerance for soil moisture, and in fact require different levels of water at different seasons. They require standing water less than 40 inches to grow, but young plants die when water levels rise above 20 inches, and for the plants to flower, the roots need to be exposed to air. (I'm simplifying, but you can see the real numbers in the link). On the other hand, while they can survive in drained soil temporarily, cattails will die after two seasons of drought.
To make matters worse, cattails transform the environments they colonize. Their roots bind mud and their stems slow water movement and increase deposition. Water becomes shallower and (as the cattails use nutrients) poorer, and cattails loose out to grass (http://soils.ifas.ufl.edu/wetlands/... cattail abundance in northern everglades.pdf)
So you can't find or plant a cattail marsh and depend on its continuous existence. Even in optimal water conditions, the very fact that cattails are growing there means that the environment will soon become impossible for cattails.
Without extensive intervention (i.e. dredging), a productive cattail marsh becomes an unproductive patch of grass. I'm willing to bet that the amount of grunt-work needed to dredge out several tons of mud and vegetable litter from a cattail farm every ten years or so would be too much for proto-agriculturalists...unless they had domesticated mammoths
Hmmm. Very interesting. Although I have seen cattail stands in ditches last twenty years or more.
And yes, so to make it work, you'd need relatively sophisticated flood control - basically ponding water levels, flooding a region for certain periods of time and then draining it.
That would be pretty labour intensive, and involve a significant grasp of environmental engineering.
You'd probably also need some sort of crop rotation or milpas system, a second viable crop species to work with.
To get that you'd need a pre-existing level of sophistication. But if you already had that level of sophistication, then in all probability, you've got an existing, working agricultural package and you don't need this stuff.
It definitely works towards an answer.
THE THULE SO FAR....
This is just a thumbnail of the developments of Thule culture over the last 22 pages. I things seem superficially implausible, well, go back and read the posts that explain in detail.
2000 BCE - An Asian group island hops over the Aleutian Island chain between Alaska and Siberia, becoming one of the last Asian peoples to travel to the new world, island Settling in Alaska, they bring with them domesticated sled dogs and various adaptations and technologies for arctic living. They are the ancestors of what in our time are the Aleut, Yup’ik, Thule and Inuit.
* the Aleut, left behind on th Aleutian Islands, diverge from the Alaskan group, which will be known as the Thule. For the next two thousand years, the Thule inhabit northern Alaska, with the Dene to the South and the Dorset culture occupying the rest of the arctic.
700 - Alaska. A young Dene girl flees her band and joins up with a Thule tribal group, eventually becoming a member of the tribe. She introduces the Dene custom of reciprocity - ie, returning a gift to nature for its bounty. This includes leaving gifts of food for mice whose dens are raided, casting fish heads or entrails back to the water, replanting a section of root which has been dug up, etc.
750 - Alaska. The practice of reciprocity is spreading throughout the Thule population. Many aspects of the practice have little benefit and eventually diminish. One practice, that of replanting roots produces a tangible benefit - replanted roots are far more likely to regenerate, resulting in more harvesting opportunities in the future, and more predictable harvesting patches.
* Hedysarum Alpinum - aka Sweetvetch, grows in increasing proliferation. Sweetvetch is an aggressive pioneer species that grows readily in a variety of conditions.
* Claytonia Tuberosa - aka Claytonia, which was slowly harvested to local extinctions begins to make a comeback. Claytonia is not nearly as aggressive as Sweetvetch and requires more specific conditions to grow.
* Sweetvetch and Claytonia populations increase steadily through the Thule areas, increasing the overall food supply by a small but substantial increment. More importantly, it provides a stable food opportunity in times of scarcity, allowing the subsistence population to evade scarcity bottlenecks. The Thule population increases more rapidly over OTL.
950 - Alaska. Thule populations begin to migrate from Alaska, moving west across the Bering strait into Siberia, and east into the Canadian Arctic.
* Beginning of the Medieval warm period. Proliferation of plants, animal populations increasing. Ice conditions more variable.
* In Siberia, the Thule encounter other northern peoples, particularly the Chukchi and are confined to the most inhospitable regions of the Siberian coast.
* In the east, the Thule encounter the Dorset culture, which is not coping well with climactic changes brought about by the Medieval Warm period. The Thule have the advantage of a superior technological package - bows and arrows, dogs and sleds, and are much more aggressive. There is some technical exchange, the Thule adopt toggle harpoons and seal hunting techniques. Over the next few centuries, the Dorset will be steadily displaced and driven to extinction by the Thule taking over their territories.
* In the new territories occupied by the Thule, Claytonia is absent and Sweetvetch is much less common. Ironically, the Thule note that many areas which seem like prime Sweetvetch grounds are barren of the plant or contain more toxic relatives. This is seen as the land being displeased or hostile.
* The reciprocity practice of replanting root cuttings, as a gift to nature for its bounty, evolves. Instead of the gift being given in thanks, the gift is given as an entreaty. Root cuttings, and eventually seed pods, are carried and planted in new areas where it seems they should grow as a good will offering to the land, and hopes of receiving a bounty. This works, and Sweetvetch proliferates wherever the Thule establish themselves.
* A secondary practice of uprooting or destroying toxic rivals creates more opportunities for Sweetvetch.
* A Shamanic tradition of plant lore and plant expertise begins to evolve.
1000 - The Thule are spreading steadily East, passing the McKenzie Delta, spreading into the Islands and moving towards Hudson Bay.
* Sweetvetch has proliferated in many Thule areas, increasing even beyond Alaskan densities as a result of habitual planting efforts.
* Sweetvetch takes about three years to produce an edible root. Because of planting and harvesting practices, different Sweetvetch pastures tend to be of uniform ages. This begins to affect regional or local travel patterns, and produces increasing territoriality. Thule carry mental maps of different patches, and the ages of patches in order to ensure that only mature patches are harvested. Memorization, and arrangement of marking stones, becomes the province of Shamans.
* Claytonia, aided by Shamanic knowledge and trial and error begins to spread. Initially, it did not respond nearly as well as Sweetvetch did to efforts to replant it in new territories, being a more delicate plant. The accumulating lore of Shamanic knowledge regarding the plants requirements, allows more careful and successful planting efforts.
* Bistort Alpinum, aka Bistort, another root plant which has small edible rhizomes, but requires fertile soils and water, is also spread deliberately, as a minor food source.
* In OTL, plants are a small part of Thule diet, and diminish substantially as the Thule move east into Dorset lands. In the ATL, Sweetvetch and Claytonia are significant and become increasingly significant as the Thule move east, due to accumulating pre-agricultural practices.
* Thule population increases more rapidly than OTL, in part because of significantly greater amount of food, but especially because of seasonal bottlenecks. Thule territories are smaller, there is more resource conflict, and stronger migration pressures.
* Conflict makes for stronger clan bonds, and coalitions of clans and tribes, creating informal wars for resources, and informal blocs to make war, which produce internal trade or exchange arrangements.
* In the Coppermine River area of the MacKenzie Bay region, Thule find deposits of placer copper and use fires and stone hammers to pound malleable tin into useful tools. These skills may have been inherited from the Dorset. The Thule of the region, in OTL become the ‘Copper Inuit.’ The Copper Thule of the region trade copper artifacts locally.
1050 The Thule have pushed the Dorset from Baffin Island and from the western shores of Hudson Bay, bringing with them proliferations of Sweetvetch and a slower spread of Claytonia.
* The Thule around Hudson Bay encounter another root plant - Rosalea Rodea, aka Roseroot, which has strong medicinal and food properties. Highly valued, the evolving pre-agricultural practices are sophisticated enough to allow the successful proliferation of Roseroot. It begins to spread westward.
* Thule populations significantly exceed OTL levels.
* Copper artifacts show up sporadically throughout the Thule range, and are highly valued.
1100 Thule reach Ellesmere Island in the north, but neither Sweetvetch nor Claytonia thrive at those latitudes. Thule also cross to Northern Quebec/Labrador in the East.
There are secondary waves of migation into Siberia, with later ones bringing with them Roseroot and increasingly elaborate plant lore, which is adopted by the marginalized Thule/Yupik.
Natural/Human selection processes are beginning to domesticate Sweetvetch and Bistort. The favoured plants are starting to become distinguishable from the normal wild varieties. More resilient, larger roots and pearls, etc. Plantings from one region to another expose a variety of local strains to each other, resulting in crossbreeding and hybridisation, and acting as a multiplier for genetic diversity. A variety of phenotypes are being expressed, and increasingly some are being selected for and some against.
1150 Thule begin to reach Greenland,
* Sweetvetch is now extremely common through most of the Thule range in densities exceeding Alaska. Claytonia and Roseroot densities continue to increase, and in some areas are near those of Sweetvetch.
* Plants are a substantial though subordinate part of the Thule diet, particularly during subsistence bottleneck periods.
* Plant knowledge and Lore is now a major aspect of Shamanic wisdom, translated or interpreted as spiritual provenance. Shamans are skilled at identifying locations where the spirits are most favourable, and the techniques that please them.
* In particular, in Baffin Island, it is determined that plants grow best on southern facing slopes, and benefit from wind breaks water channels. This knowledge spreads widely, but Baffin Islanders are notable for occasionally building small windbreaks or digging trenches.
* The escalating Thule population begins to put serious pressure on wildlife populations, with some species being hunted out locally, and forcing temporary intensive reliance on plant populations while local populations relocate, allowing the areas to be recolonized by animal populations. Relocating groups rely heavily on extended family and clan networks, and members often end up several hundred miles away.
* One feature of escalating population is increasingly smaller resource territories, and much more aggressive possession and defense of resource territories. Falling just sort of concepts of private property, plant harvesting areas in particular, and resource territories generally are seen as propretary to clans and families
.
* Resource territories are too small, however, to supply all of a family or clan needs, particularly o specialized materials. Raiding and Shaman guided trade/exchange are both on the rise.
* Pycrete begins to be observed. Mixtures of ice and shredded plant materials in or near refuse heaps, it is observed, seem to be much slower to melt, and are much harder and more resilient than ordinary ice. Mostly this is a curiosity and a nuisance.
1200 Thule populations in most areas are now several times that of OTL, and plants, particularly key plant species are an essential part of their diet.
Sweetvetch, Roseroot, Claytonia have reached maximum wild densities possible through much of the Thule range.
The medieval warm period is coming to an end. The weather is growing colder, plants are having more difficulty growing wild, animal populations are stabilized and starting to drop.
The beginning of the Thule Agricultural Revolution, first period. The accumulated packages of pre-agricultural practices, together with climate change, population, and shifts in wild harvest result in Agriculture emerging more or less simultaneously in three regions - Baffin Island, Hudson Bay Coast and McKenzie Bay, spreading out from there.
There is a synergistic effect as local agricultural expansions produce population densities which bring about severe declines in wildlife.
Shamans are beginning to emerge as specialists - healers, negotiators who assist in addressing resource imbalances, those who negotiate with the spirits of nature, and those who negotiate with the spirits of land. Systems of apprenticeship and of consultation and exchanges of information and lore, though informal, are developing.
1250 Microclimate engineering, which is at the heart of Thule Agriculture, reaches a level of substantial sophistication.
Ad hoc use of Pycrete as building materials for storage silos. Experimentation with various preservation techniques.
New plants are added formally to the emerging agricultural package. These include Bistort, Fireweed, and Ragwort.
Beginnings of semi-domestication of small predators to prey on agricultural vermin. Also, emergence of the Vole Dog breed, and various vermin control measures.
The Agricultural package continues to expand across Baffin Island, and moving inland along the Canadian coasts between Hudson Bay and Alaska.
Agriculture brings with it larger populations and an exponentially larger desire for copper tools. The Coppermine trading network is carrying orders of magnitude more copper artifacts than in OTL. Local shortages of nuggets and placer deposits occur.
Shamans exchanges begin to evolve into a network, initially carrying accumulated information and lore, it begins to carry ‘political’ and ‘social’ information, and develop political importance. Within the network of Shamans hierarchies begin to emerge based on individual status, knowledge and skill.
1300 Agricultural efforts expand as far north as Ellesmere and Victoria Island, with a corresponding intensification of microclimate engineering.
Conflicts on Islands between hunter/gatherers and agriculturalists at margins of territory. Particularly Banks and Victoria Islands.
Caribou domestication on the mainland begins to spread. The animals are used initially for food, but are soon applied to pack and then plow labour.
Bistort and Sweetvetch are now fully domesticated and substantially different from wild forms. Bistort is a significant component, particularly in the northern islands.
Dwarf Fireweed is cultivated in Ellesmere.
A relatively self aware Shamanic Class/Network acts as a unifying agent, cultural force and political influence for the Thule peoples. Although there is no real awareness of geography per se, the Shamanic network passes information and small goods from the east coast of Greenland to the far arctic coasts of Siberia (although an item of information has less than a 50% chance may take several years to travel the whole distance from one point to aother)
First instances of Copper Ore smelting by clan groups who have exhausted local placer deposits.
1350 Beginnings of Medieval Glacial Period (first half of the little ice age).
Second Agricultural Period. Expansion of Agriculture into Quebec and Labrador, and the expansion of the Ellesmere sub-package into Greenland. Displacements of hunter-gatherer Thule.
Emergence of regional proto-states and tribal confederations, the leadership and policies of which are heavily influenced by, but not controlled by Shamans.
Increasing refinement of Agriculture overall as the climate worsens and harvest declines.
Declining harvest and worsening climate cause a population drop in Ellesmere. Ellesmere refugees spread into Greenland. They also move south through the Canadian Islands and mainland, but retain clan ties, forming an elaborate trading network.
Slow consolidation of Agricultural practices and adoption of Agriculture by the Alaskan Thule.
Rapid adoption of Agriculture, particularly productive domesticated plant species and microclimate engineering by the Siberian Thule. Import of copper artifacts. More migrations. Escalations of conflicts with the Chukchi.
Exchanges and selections of Alaskan and Siberian Claytonia phenotypes lead to a clearly fully domesticated form of Claytonia.
Widespread use of Pycrete Silos for storage.
Widespread Semi-Domestication of Owls, Foxes and Ermines to control vermin.
Conflicts between Agriculturalists and Hunter Gatherers on Banks and Victoria Island lead to domestication of Musk Ox.
Ptarmigan microlivestock Domestication event on Baffin Island. The birds begin to spread widely almost immediately.
1400 Cultivation of Fernweed. Systematic cultivation of various berries.
Ptarmigan have spread through most of Thule range.
Domestication of Arctic hare as secondary livestock within 25 years of Ptarmigan, and spreading rapidly.
Domesticated Caribou are now common through most Thule Agricultural areas. Caribou labour and meat is an essential part of Thule culture. Beginning cultural split between Caribou herders and farmers.
Domesticated Musk Ox are spreading, but not nearly as widely distributed as Caribou and are considered inferior beasts.
Smelting taking place regularly along the coppermine, but placer deposits are still preferred.
In Siberia, Musk Ox and Ptarmigan, as well as increasing quantities of copper, are game changers. More migrations from Alaska, as stronger clan and kinship ties bring people over.
The Chukchi are steadily pushed back by the Siberian Thule. In addition, taking a path of least resistance, the Siberian Thule are expanding along the arctic coast, coming into conflict with, and displacing Yakut, Even and Evenk tribes as they go.
Meteoric iron found in Greenland. Shortly after, Telluric Iron found in Greenland in the Disko Bay area.
Greenland Iron enters the Ellesmere trading network. Crude Iron artifacts compete with or displace copper in Ellesmere,
Baffin Island, Quebec Labrador and Hudson Bay.
Kvan, from Greenland, found around Disko Bay, added to the Thule agricultural package, though due to the Ellesmere bottleneck, its spread will be very slow.
The Medieval Glacial period produces a succession of poor crops, even with the high degree of refinement of the maturing Thule Agricultural package. There are large displacements of population, and large movements south, into the lands of Dene, Cree and Athabaskan peoples. The result is warfare, ethnic cleansing, and 50% mortality rates among the southern moving Thule, but in the end, the Thule range has expanded southward significantly.
Shifting in many northern areas away from agriculture to horticulture and herding. Musk ox in particular do well. Microclimate engineering and agricultural practices diverted to animal fodder to sustain larger herds.
Labrador Tea emerges from Quebec/Labrador, is readily adopted in Baffin Island, and spreads rapidly west.
On the west coast, expanding Thule encounter the Tlingit culture and establish themselves as an upper class. They introduce their agricultural package, approaching its southern limits. New crops - cattails and arrowhead, come into cultivation, through adaptation of microclimate engineering to water and flood manipulation.
1450 At the Coppermine river, attempts to reproduce Iron lead to various trial and error efforts. Eventually, cassiterite is added, producing Bronze.
Competing metals trading networks emerge, with Copper/Bronze in the west, dominated by McKenzie Bay and Coppermine River proto-states, and Iron in the east, through the Ellesmere based network.
Arrowhead and Cattail cultivation expand with the hybrid Thule/Tinglit society along the west coast.
Musk Ox are relatively common as a draft animal, particularly in the northern reaches. Except in Siberia, they are generally considered an inferior animal, however, and are not as common as Caribou.
Arrowhead and Cattail cultivation appears sporadically across the southern reaches of Thule territory, particularly around Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes and the lower reaches of Hudson Bay. Due to climactic issues, labour requirements, and the substantial shift required in engineering techniques from dryland/cold temperatures to floodlands, it does not spread widely north.
Hunter/Gatherer Thule in Greenland relate stories to the Agricultural Thule of a community of giants to the south. Intrigued, explorers find the ruins of the Norse Eastern settlement.
Shortly thereafter, Shamans seek out the surviving community. A strange people of remarkable size and alien manner, with all sorts of unearthly plants and animals who call themselves the Norse.
End of the Medieval Glacial period, and the beginning of a century of relatively moderate temperatures before the Little Ice Age bottoms things out.
End of the Second Agricultural Period, beginning of the Norse Interchange.
This is just a thumbnail of the developments of Thule culture over the last 22 pages. I things seem superficially implausible, well, go back and read the posts that explain in detail.
2000 BCE - An Asian group island hops over the Aleutian Island chain between Alaska and Siberia, becoming one of the last Asian peoples to travel to the new world, island Settling in Alaska, they bring with them domesticated sled dogs and various adaptations and technologies for arctic living. They are the ancestors of what in our time are the Aleut, Yup’ik, Thule and Inuit.
* the Aleut, left behind on th Aleutian Islands, diverge from the Alaskan group, which will be known as the Thule. For the next two thousand years, the Thule inhabit northern Alaska, with the Dene to the South and the Dorset culture occupying the rest of the arctic.
700 - Alaska. A young Dene girl flees her band and joins up with a Thule tribal group, eventually becoming a member of the tribe. She introduces the Dene custom of reciprocity - ie, returning a gift to nature for its bounty. This includes leaving gifts of food for mice whose dens are raided, casting fish heads or entrails back to the water, replanting a section of root which has been dug up, etc.
750 - Alaska. The practice of reciprocity is spreading throughout the Thule population. Many aspects of the practice have little benefit and eventually diminish. One practice, that of replanting roots produces a tangible benefit - replanted roots are far more likely to regenerate, resulting in more harvesting opportunities in the future, and more predictable harvesting patches.
* Hedysarum Alpinum - aka Sweetvetch, grows in increasing proliferation. Sweetvetch is an aggressive pioneer species that grows readily in a variety of conditions.
* Claytonia Tuberosa - aka Claytonia, which was slowly harvested to local extinctions begins to make a comeback. Claytonia is not nearly as aggressive as Sweetvetch and requires more specific conditions to grow.
* Sweetvetch and Claytonia populations increase steadily through the Thule areas, increasing the overall food supply by a small but substantial increment. More importantly, it provides a stable food opportunity in times of scarcity, allowing the subsistence population to evade scarcity bottlenecks. The Thule population increases more rapidly over OTL.
950 - Alaska. Thule populations begin to migrate from Alaska, moving west across the Bering strait into Siberia, and east into the Canadian Arctic.
* Beginning of the Medieval warm period. Proliferation of plants, animal populations increasing. Ice conditions more variable.
* In Siberia, the Thule encounter other northern peoples, particularly the Chukchi and are confined to the most inhospitable regions of the Siberian coast.
* In the east, the Thule encounter the Dorset culture, which is not coping well with climactic changes brought about by the Medieval Warm period. The Thule have the advantage of a superior technological package - bows and arrows, dogs and sleds, and are much more aggressive. There is some technical exchange, the Thule adopt toggle harpoons and seal hunting techniques. Over the next few centuries, the Dorset will be steadily displaced and driven to extinction by the Thule taking over their territories.
* In the new territories occupied by the Thule, Claytonia is absent and Sweetvetch is much less common. Ironically, the Thule note that many areas which seem like prime Sweetvetch grounds are barren of the plant or contain more toxic relatives. This is seen as the land being displeased or hostile.
* The reciprocity practice of replanting root cuttings, as a gift to nature for its bounty, evolves. Instead of the gift being given in thanks, the gift is given as an entreaty. Root cuttings, and eventually seed pods, are carried and planted in new areas where it seems they should grow as a good will offering to the land, and hopes of receiving a bounty. This works, and Sweetvetch proliferates wherever the Thule establish themselves.
* A secondary practice of uprooting or destroying toxic rivals creates more opportunities for Sweetvetch.
* A Shamanic tradition of plant lore and plant expertise begins to evolve.
1000 - The Thule are spreading steadily East, passing the McKenzie Delta, spreading into the Islands and moving towards Hudson Bay.
* Sweetvetch has proliferated in many Thule areas, increasing even beyond Alaskan densities as a result of habitual planting efforts.
* Sweetvetch takes about three years to produce an edible root. Because of planting and harvesting practices, different Sweetvetch pastures tend to be of uniform ages. This begins to affect regional or local travel patterns, and produces increasing territoriality. Thule carry mental maps of different patches, and the ages of patches in order to ensure that only mature patches are harvested. Memorization, and arrangement of marking stones, becomes the province of Shamans.
* Claytonia, aided by Shamanic knowledge and trial and error begins to spread. Initially, it did not respond nearly as well as Sweetvetch did to efforts to replant it in new territories, being a more delicate plant. The accumulating lore of Shamanic knowledge regarding the plants requirements, allows more careful and successful planting efforts.
* Bistort Alpinum, aka Bistort, another root plant which has small edible rhizomes, but requires fertile soils and water, is also spread deliberately, as a minor food source.
* In OTL, plants are a small part of Thule diet, and diminish substantially as the Thule move east into Dorset lands. In the ATL, Sweetvetch and Claytonia are significant and become increasingly significant as the Thule move east, due to accumulating pre-agricultural practices.
* Thule population increases more rapidly than OTL, in part because of significantly greater amount of food, but especially because of seasonal bottlenecks. Thule territories are smaller, there is more resource conflict, and stronger migration pressures.
* Conflict makes for stronger clan bonds, and coalitions of clans and tribes, creating informal wars for resources, and informal blocs to make war, which produce internal trade or exchange arrangements.
* In the Coppermine River area of the MacKenzie Bay region, Thule find deposits of placer copper and use fires and stone hammers to pound malleable tin into useful tools. These skills may have been inherited from the Dorset. The Thule of the region, in OTL become the ‘Copper Inuit.’ The Copper Thule of the region trade copper artifacts locally.
1050 The Thule have pushed the Dorset from Baffin Island and from the western shores of Hudson Bay, bringing with them proliferations of Sweetvetch and a slower spread of Claytonia.
* The Thule around Hudson Bay encounter another root plant - Rosalea Rodea, aka Roseroot, which has strong medicinal and food properties. Highly valued, the evolving pre-agricultural practices are sophisticated enough to allow the successful proliferation of Roseroot. It begins to spread westward.
* Thule populations significantly exceed OTL levels.
* Copper artifacts show up sporadically throughout the Thule range, and are highly valued.
1100 Thule reach Ellesmere Island in the north, but neither Sweetvetch nor Claytonia thrive at those latitudes. Thule also cross to Northern Quebec/Labrador in the East.
There are secondary waves of migation into Siberia, with later ones bringing with them Roseroot and increasingly elaborate plant lore, which is adopted by the marginalized Thule/Yupik.
Natural/Human selection processes are beginning to domesticate Sweetvetch and Bistort. The favoured plants are starting to become distinguishable from the normal wild varieties. More resilient, larger roots and pearls, etc. Plantings from one region to another expose a variety of local strains to each other, resulting in crossbreeding and hybridisation, and acting as a multiplier for genetic diversity. A variety of phenotypes are being expressed, and increasingly some are being selected for and some against.
1150 Thule begin to reach Greenland,
* Sweetvetch is now extremely common through most of the Thule range in densities exceeding Alaska. Claytonia and Roseroot densities continue to increase, and in some areas are near those of Sweetvetch.
* Plants are a substantial though subordinate part of the Thule diet, particularly during subsistence bottleneck periods.
* Plant knowledge and Lore is now a major aspect of Shamanic wisdom, translated or interpreted as spiritual provenance. Shamans are skilled at identifying locations where the spirits are most favourable, and the techniques that please them.
* In particular, in Baffin Island, it is determined that plants grow best on southern facing slopes, and benefit from wind breaks water channels. This knowledge spreads widely, but Baffin Islanders are notable for occasionally building small windbreaks or digging trenches.
* The escalating Thule population begins to put serious pressure on wildlife populations, with some species being hunted out locally, and forcing temporary intensive reliance on plant populations while local populations relocate, allowing the areas to be recolonized by animal populations. Relocating groups rely heavily on extended family and clan networks, and members often end up several hundred miles away.
* One feature of escalating population is increasingly smaller resource territories, and much more aggressive possession and defense of resource territories. Falling just sort of concepts of private property, plant harvesting areas in particular, and resource territories generally are seen as propretary to clans and families
.
* Resource territories are too small, however, to supply all of a family or clan needs, particularly o specialized materials. Raiding and Shaman guided trade/exchange are both on the rise.
* Pycrete begins to be observed. Mixtures of ice and shredded plant materials in or near refuse heaps, it is observed, seem to be much slower to melt, and are much harder and more resilient than ordinary ice. Mostly this is a curiosity and a nuisance.
1200 Thule populations in most areas are now several times that of OTL, and plants, particularly key plant species are an essential part of their diet.
Sweetvetch, Roseroot, Claytonia have reached maximum wild densities possible through much of the Thule range.
The medieval warm period is coming to an end. The weather is growing colder, plants are having more difficulty growing wild, animal populations are stabilized and starting to drop.
The beginning of the Thule Agricultural Revolution, first period. The accumulated packages of pre-agricultural practices, together with climate change, population, and shifts in wild harvest result in Agriculture emerging more or less simultaneously in three regions - Baffin Island, Hudson Bay Coast and McKenzie Bay, spreading out from there.
There is a synergistic effect as local agricultural expansions produce population densities which bring about severe declines in wildlife.
Shamans are beginning to emerge as specialists - healers, negotiators who assist in addressing resource imbalances, those who negotiate with the spirits of nature, and those who negotiate with the spirits of land. Systems of apprenticeship and of consultation and exchanges of information and lore, though informal, are developing.
1250 Microclimate engineering, which is at the heart of Thule Agriculture, reaches a level of substantial sophistication.
Ad hoc use of Pycrete as building materials for storage silos. Experimentation with various preservation techniques.
New plants are added formally to the emerging agricultural package. These include Bistort, Fireweed, and Ragwort.
Beginnings of semi-domestication of small predators to prey on agricultural vermin. Also, emergence of the Vole Dog breed, and various vermin control measures.
The Agricultural package continues to expand across Baffin Island, and moving inland along the Canadian coasts between Hudson Bay and Alaska.
Agriculture brings with it larger populations and an exponentially larger desire for copper tools. The Coppermine trading network is carrying orders of magnitude more copper artifacts than in OTL. Local shortages of nuggets and placer deposits occur.
Shamans exchanges begin to evolve into a network, initially carrying accumulated information and lore, it begins to carry ‘political’ and ‘social’ information, and develop political importance. Within the network of Shamans hierarchies begin to emerge based on individual status, knowledge and skill.
1300 Agricultural efforts expand as far north as Ellesmere and Victoria Island, with a corresponding intensification of microclimate engineering.
Conflicts on Islands between hunter/gatherers and agriculturalists at margins of territory. Particularly Banks and Victoria Islands.
Caribou domestication on the mainland begins to spread. The animals are used initially for food, but are soon applied to pack and then plow labour.
Bistort and Sweetvetch are now fully domesticated and substantially different from wild forms. Bistort is a significant component, particularly in the northern islands.
Dwarf Fireweed is cultivated in Ellesmere.
A relatively self aware Shamanic Class/Network acts as a unifying agent, cultural force and political influence for the Thule peoples. Although there is no real awareness of geography per se, the Shamanic network passes information and small goods from the east coast of Greenland to the far arctic coasts of Siberia (although an item of information has less than a 50% chance may take several years to travel the whole distance from one point to aother)
First instances of Copper Ore smelting by clan groups who have exhausted local placer deposits.
1350 Beginnings of Medieval Glacial Period (first half of the little ice age).
Second Agricultural Period. Expansion of Agriculture into Quebec and Labrador, and the expansion of the Ellesmere sub-package into Greenland. Displacements of hunter-gatherer Thule.
Emergence of regional proto-states and tribal confederations, the leadership and policies of which are heavily influenced by, but not controlled by Shamans.
Increasing refinement of Agriculture overall as the climate worsens and harvest declines.
Declining harvest and worsening climate cause a population drop in Ellesmere. Ellesmere refugees spread into Greenland. They also move south through the Canadian Islands and mainland, but retain clan ties, forming an elaborate trading network.
Slow consolidation of Agricultural practices and adoption of Agriculture by the Alaskan Thule.
Rapid adoption of Agriculture, particularly productive domesticated plant species and microclimate engineering by the Siberian Thule. Import of copper artifacts. More migrations. Escalations of conflicts with the Chukchi.
Exchanges and selections of Alaskan and Siberian Claytonia phenotypes lead to a clearly fully domesticated form of Claytonia.
Widespread use of Pycrete Silos for storage.
Widespread Semi-Domestication of Owls, Foxes and Ermines to control vermin.
Conflicts between Agriculturalists and Hunter Gatherers on Banks and Victoria Island lead to domestication of Musk Ox.
Ptarmigan microlivestock Domestication event on Baffin Island. The birds begin to spread widely almost immediately.
1400 Cultivation of Fernweed. Systematic cultivation of various berries.
Ptarmigan have spread through most of Thule range.
Domestication of Arctic hare as secondary livestock within 25 years of Ptarmigan, and spreading rapidly.
Domesticated Caribou are now common through most Thule Agricultural areas. Caribou labour and meat is an essential part of Thule culture. Beginning cultural split between Caribou herders and farmers.
Domesticated Musk Ox are spreading, but not nearly as widely distributed as Caribou and are considered inferior beasts.
Smelting taking place regularly along the coppermine, but placer deposits are still preferred.
In Siberia, Musk Ox and Ptarmigan, as well as increasing quantities of copper, are game changers. More migrations from Alaska, as stronger clan and kinship ties bring people over.
The Chukchi are steadily pushed back by the Siberian Thule. In addition, taking a path of least resistance, the Siberian Thule are expanding along the arctic coast, coming into conflict with, and displacing Yakut, Even and Evenk tribes as they go.
Meteoric iron found in Greenland. Shortly after, Telluric Iron found in Greenland in the Disko Bay area.
Greenland Iron enters the Ellesmere trading network. Crude Iron artifacts compete with or displace copper in Ellesmere,
Baffin Island, Quebec Labrador and Hudson Bay.
Kvan, from Greenland, found around Disko Bay, added to the Thule agricultural package, though due to the Ellesmere bottleneck, its spread will be very slow.
The Medieval Glacial period produces a succession of poor crops, even with the high degree of refinement of the maturing Thule Agricultural package. There are large displacements of population, and large movements south, into the lands of Dene, Cree and Athabaskan peoples. The result is warfare, ethnic cleansing, and 50% mortality rates among the southern moving Thule, but in the end, the Thule range has expanded southward significantly.
Shifting in many northern areas away from agriculture to horticulture and herding. Musk ox in particular do well. Microclimate engineering and agricultural practices diverted to animal fodder to sustain larger herds.
Labrador Tea emerges from Quebec/Labrador, is readily adopted in Baffin Island, and spreads rapidly west.
On the west coast, expanding Thule encounter the Tlingit culture and establish themselves as an upper class. They introduce their agricultural package, approaching its southern limits. New crops - cattails and arrowhead, come into cultivation, through adaptation of microclimate engineering to water and flood manipulation.
1450 At the Coppermine river, attempts to reproduce Iron lead to various trial and error efforts. Eventually, cassiterite is added, producing Bronze.
Competing metals trading networks emerge, with Copper/Bronze in the west, dominated by McKenzie Bay and Coppermine River proto-states, and Iron in the east, through the Ellesmere based network.
Arrowhead and Cattail cultivation expand with the hybrid Thule/Tinglit society along the west coast.
Musk Ox are relatively common as a draft animal, particularly in the northern reaches. Except in Siberia, they are generally considered an inferior animal, however, and are not as common as Caribou.
Arrowhead and Cattail cultivation appears sporadically across the southern reaches of Thule territory, particularly around Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes and the lower reaches of Hudson Bay. Due to climactic issues, labour requirements, and the substantial shift required in engineering techniques from dryland/cold temperatures to floodlands, it does not spread widely north.
Hunter/Gatherer Thule in Greenland relate stories to the Agricultural Thule of a community of giants to the south. Intrigued, explorers find the ruins of the Norse Eastern settlement.
Shortly thereafter, Shamans seek out the surviving community. A strange people of remarkable size and alien manner, with all sorts of unearthly plants and animals who call themselves the Norse.
End of the Medieval Glacial period, and the beginning of a century of relatively moderate temperatures before the Little Ice Age bottoms things out.
End of the Second Agricultural Period, beginning of the Norse Interchange.
Obviously you were hallucinating
Well, I'm no expert, and it's totally possible I misread those sources. There may also be some crucial difference between a ditch and a natural marsh (which would be great for your scenario: have musk oxen pull big plows through ditches to make them deeper).
I agree about hydrological engineering. The fiddly sophistication of rice cultivation but the muscle of wheat cultivation.
Maybe these techniques are perfected by agricultural people from central North America, resettled in the north?
Obviously you were hallucinating
Quite possibly.
I wouldn't say that.
You wouldn't want musk oxen for the task though. Their fur or wool is an excellent insulator, but it soaks pretty quickly and the animal starts to lose heat. Musk Oxen prefer dryer colder climates.
You could probably get Caribou for the job. They're much more water tolerant, and well known for fjording rivers and lakes.
The perfect domesticate for something like this would be the Southeast Asian water buffalo. Well, not perfect, the water buffalo is more a tropical animal, and this would be a temperate/boreal environment.... So you'd want an animal suited to colder forest marsh territory, immensely large and strong....
Yeppers.
Or Agricultural peoples from the north, resettling south?
- Status