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

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The Emergence of Siberian Agriculture


The Coming of Agriculture

Agriculture, for instance, emerges among the Bering straight Thule of the Siberian coast between 1200 and 1300. Interestingly, organized agriculture in Siberia precedes its emergence in Alaska. ie, the Siberians started farming before the Alaskans, which is something of a cultural anomaly.

Did agriculture leapfrog from its eastern origins, across Alaska to the Bering Thule? Certainly, there is some evidence for that. There was definitely cultural transmission westward into Alaska not seen in OTL. The toggle harpoon made steady progress westward across the Alaskan coastline, for example, a development which has no OTL counterpart. By this time, Shamanic traditions of gifts and knowledge exchange underlying the development of agriculture were well established and certainly filtering westward.

Alaska as a relatively stable and populous center of Thule culture, however, was slow to assemble the components of proto-agricultural practice. There was no need, for example to tear out bear root, or to spread claytonia to locations where it did not grow, or to engage in the variety of tricks and ceremonies and techniques to get the plants to grow. They already grew, their growing patches and cycles were well known, there seemed little need to make additional effort to consolidate this into an agricultural package. Proto-agricultural techniques might be acknowledged, or added to local repertoires, but their spread was erratic and their impact limited.

The Siberian Thule between 900 and 1200 inherited the early proto-agricultural practice which was relatively common in Alaska. And during this time, at least some of the proto-agricultural practices being developed in the east filtered through or around Alaska to make it into Siberia.

But the Siberian Thule had different issues than their counterparts in the East. In the East, many of the key plants either did not grow or grew erratically or in scarcity. They had to be introduced to where they were not. In the barren regions that the Siberian Thule made their own, the plants were already present, possibly in greater diversity. The trouble was that in these particularly barren lands, the plants grew poorly or not at all.

The proportions of Sweetvetch and Claytonia in Siberian Thule available for diets declined steadily between 900 and 1100, despite proto-agricultural practice. Essentially, these lands had much less carrying capacity, and population pressure produced intensive harvesting that tended to eradicate plants. Proto-Agricultural practices suitable for the more benign Alaskan territory were less effective, and unable to keep up with pressure.

The slow decline of carrying capacity of the lands combined with natural increase and migration from Alaska meant that there was a steady pressure, and a steady encroachment on Chuchki lands. To the Chuchki, their Thule neighbors steadily acquired a reputation as thieves and poachers, raiding fertile harvesting sites, stealing animals and caribou, as well as seizing and usurping actual territories. An intensifying state of warfare existed between the Chuchki and the Thule.


Over this period of time, the Siberian Thule began to elaborate and develop proto-agricultural practices of their own. Some of the earliest examples of Thule mound building are found in Siberia. As well as readily adopting new practices filtering through from Alaska. In Alaska, these new practices were considered trivial curiousities at best, but in Siberia were often adopted with enthusiasm and spread readily.


The Agricultural revolutions which took place in the East emerged almost concurrently among the Siberian Thule. There was some credible argument that the Siberian agricultural complex may be a fourth site of independent invention. But this is controversial. Although there was no direct contact between the MacKenzie basin original site and Siberia, there’s enough evidence of communication and overlap to suggest that the Siberans agricultural complex is derivative.
 
The Initial Impact of Agriculture

Agriculture was a mixed blessing to the Siberian Thule. On the one hand, the formalization and assembly of proto-agricultural techniques into a working package was a boon. It allowed the Siberian Thule to make previously marginal or barren lands much more productive than the lands held by the Chuchki. This allowed for rapid escalation of population through natural increase and migration. This increase resulted in an a major intensification of land hunger and encroachment on Chuchki lands.

But at the same time, Agriculture swung the military balance back in favour of the Chuchki. Agriculture meant more Thule. But it also meant that these Thule were tied much more closely to the land. They were more territorial, far less mobile, and committed to defending earthworks and crops which were extremely vulnerable.

The Chuchki, remaining as nomadic herders and harvesters had much less population density. But they preserved greater mobility, allowing them to concentrate their forces and population much faster and more easily than the Thule. Chuchki clans could gather together to bring overwhelming numbers to bear on Thule villages and settlements, wiping them out entirely. If pursued, the Chuchki could withdraw and scatter, leaving the Thule with nothing to strike back against.

The years 1200 to 1300 were marked by not simply agriculture, but the emergence of a nearly perpetual state of full warfare between the Chuchki and the Thule. It was a state of warfare so intense that even the practices of slave taking or wife stealing declined markedly. Rather, each side took every opportunity to murder the other.

For the Chuchki, this was a fateful decision point, since the mutual hostility meant that any hope of trade or cultural transmission between the two populations was over. Particularly so because the Chuchki found their own way of life validated. In many areas they were able to reverse the slow Thule expansion, shrinking their boundaries, and pushing the Thule north and along the arctic coast, into the territories of the Evenk and Yakut.
 
Since we've heard many hints about the particularly militaristic and somewht imperial Siberian Thule, there are going to be other shoes to drop I'm sure.

I'd be happy enough with scenarios where the Thule themselves are limited, but cultural diffusion spreads the crops and the domesticates in the northlands of Asia and there's just a whole slew of Siberian civilizations developing--I shouldn't say "civilizations" in the Toynbeeian sense since they'll hardly have time or distance enough from China (and its associated neighbors Korea and Japan) Mongolia or Russia to develop deeply on their own terms entirely, but I do think the northern peoples, if the package spread, could negotiate their assimilation of these influences more on their own terms and even achieve distinct national identities.

That's why in early posts here I didn't speak so much of "Thule" but "Arctican" peoples.

But throughout you've stressed the tendency for Thule neighbors to have little interaction with them beyond battles and that is still the pattern here, so I guess the significant chunk of territory and political bloc that is transformed by Thule cultivation is going to in fact be Thule land; maybe the Thule get influenced by peoples they absorb by conquest but their neighbors don't; "Arctican" civilization is going to be pretty much a Thule thing.

Or a Euro-Thule thing; the modes of contact with Thule with Europe are tending to produce a certain amount of diffusion and cross-pollination after all.

I do like the Scandinavians getting the jump on that, but sooner or later Thule-Russian contact will quite possibly be more--I certainly don't want to suggest "cordial," but anyway mutually productive, than these clashes with far eastern Siberian native peoples have been. More than Scandinavians, the Russians--their northern branches anyway--have more to gain by adopting Thule methods. What they have to gain is precisely the territory Siberian Thule would want, but I suspect that the resolution of that conflict will involve a gradient of culture and power that goes from a bigger, stronger Moscow (or maybe some rival northern city) that counts territory farther north than OTL in its core, to a distinct and possibly indefinitely independent Siberian Thule core in the east, and between them--debatable gradings of allegiance from one to the other. The Russians (the farthest north of them anyway, living on the Arctic Ocean itself) will pick up a lot of the Thule cultivation/domestication package, perhaps mainly from maritime Thule on the Arctic Ocean rather than the land-dwelling eastern Siberians, but the Siberian Thule core will pick up a lot of European civilization via Russians too.

And maybe Scandinavian too; if the latter can partner to some extent with Thule and travel along the Arctic shore they might leapfrog the Russians-but then those Scandinavian-influenced trading posts and perhaps towns will be drawn into the political zone of relating strongly to Russia and Russians. It isn't clear to me if Russians get Scandified more than Scandinavians get Russified but it does seem clear, the northern faces of both blocs of Europeans will be turned towards each other, grimacing in hostility or negotiating partnership--both, I imagine will happen in various contexts.
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I just made myself a bit ill by reading up on Wikipedia's version of the history of the Romanov house. (Romanovs tend to have that effect on me:p) Suffice it to say, unless Russia is deeply insulated from knock-on effects of the spread of even partial Thule cultivation into Scandinavia, the butterflies will probably prevent that house from existing by name.

Whoever aspires to Tsardom instead, based at Moscow or perhaps someplace north of there, might found a house as bad or if possible, worse. (Not a fan of the Romanovs here--I'll concede not all of them were as bad as their worst, but that's not saying much.:rolleyes:) But anyway it won't be the OTL Tsars at all. Ivan the Terrible might still appear as a butterflied ALT-cousin, after that it's a whole new dynastic map. But I suspect whoever succeeds to claim to rule the Great Russian heartland by 1700 will rule over considerable lands where Thule crops have been assimilated, far to the north of OTL major areas of cultivation, and will probably have strong North Russian and even direct Thule influences on his family history and probably personal culture and style too. If Russians in the regions where OTL they managed significant populations still live and think much as their OTL counterparts did, there will also be a Thulified branch of the Great Russian family who will live somewhat differently, and they will be a major factor in Russian politics and culture.
 
The Caribou Cross Over

Thule culture, and Thule Agriculture was a moving target, however, and the Siberian Thule had the advantage of continuing contacts with the rapidly evolving North American culture. The Siberian agricultural package continued to develop and mature rapidly, bolstered by a flow of plants, techniques and insights filtering through Alaska.

This intensified after 1300 and the widespread adoption of Agriculture by the Alaskan Thule. At this point, much of the indigenous character of Siberian Thule agriculture was lost, due to the continuing cultural influence and imports from Alaska. The trade off, however, was that Alaska became a much more direct conduit. Plants such as Dwarf Fireweed, which had been cultivated in the inhospitable climates of Ellesmere made it to Siberia, as Kvan from Greenland, Labrador Tea, and of course Roseroot.

Despite pressure from the Chuchki and the shrinking of southern and inland borders, the increasing sophistication of agriculture helped the Thule consolidate and maintain their territories, between 1300 and 1450.

For the Siberian Thule, however, the most radical developments were the imports of domesticated animals. Ptarmigan and Arctic Hare, both imported around 1375, restored needed protein to Thule diets. Indeed, ptarmigan domestication particularly, offered a fast growing ‘moveable crop’ which helped the Thule respond to Chuchki pressure.

The most important innovations, however, were the adoption of the domestication of Caribou around 1350, and Musk Ox approximately 1400, by the Siberian Thule. Each were game changers in different ways.

The Chuchki and other cultures were adept Reindeer herders even before the Thule. But upon coming to Siberia, the Thule had had trouble following suit. The Thule territories tended to be less productive and therefore less amenable to sustainable herding practices. Moreover, competition and low level warfare made it difficult for the Thule to acquire and build herds. There was a substantial learning curve to the art of herding, their animals were fewer, their herds smaller, and the forage was poorer.

In that sense, it simply made more sense to hunt wild animals and poach from Chuchki herds. Thule herds were all too vulnerable to raiding, rustling or slaughter. For the initial centuries of Thule settlement in Siberia, there were a number of attempts to branch out into reindeer herding, but no significant progress.

This all changed when surplus Alaskan herds and herders began moving migrating into Siberia, working their way down through the countryside of the established Siberian Thule, and against the Evenk, Yakut and eventually the Chuchki. There was no longer a learning curve. Instead, what we had was a cultural movement, not just individual herders, but herders with families, connections, clans and kinship lines that they could draw upon all the way back to Alaska. These were herders with their own strain of domesticate in many ways hardier or more tolerant to conditions than their asian cousins.

Thule Agriculture had conferred an advantage upon the Chuchki, in that their enemies had become more settled, less mobile and therefore more vulnerable. The large scale immigration of a caribou herding subculture meant that suddenly, the Chuchki were confronted with a Thule group as or more mobile than they were. Their last significant advantages had been neutralized.

Instead, the Chuchki were faced with rapidly expanding enemies. In Siberia, the displacement wars which accompanied shifts of lifestyle or subsistence land use between Thule groups did not occur. Rather, Thule subcultures which elsewhere competed found common cause for cooperation. Thule herders pushed out against the Chuchki, reinforced with numbers from the agricultural Thule. As the Chuchki gave way, both subcultures expanded, the prospect of new lands allowing amicable coexistence.

Between 1350 and 1450, the Chuchki found themselves being pushed back steadily. Warfare remained intense, and massacres were commonplace. During the period when their mobility had given them the advantage, the Chuchki had evolved the practice of simply withdrawing in the face of Thule counterattacks. Now in the face of almost continuous Thule pressure, the entire Chuchki population found it steadily withdrawing south and further west into the interior.

There techniques of mobile warfare, perfected earlier on the Thule, remained valid and effective against their southern neighbors. The Chuchki hit the Koryak and Evenk like a storm, overrunning territories, massacring bands, and sending these tribes moving south. On the Kamchatka Peninsula, between 1400 and 1500, the Chuchki pushed the Koryak south. The Koryak in turn pushed into and through Italmen territory setting themselves up as a ruling caste.

On the mainland, we saw a series of southern waves - Chuchki pushing into Koryak and Evenk, and these tribes in turn absorbing a loss of territory, or pushing south where they could. Neither Koryak nor Evenk made much progress on the steppe occupied by the Mongols and related nomads. They could not cope with the shift from reindeer supporting bush to horse supporting grassland. In and around Manchuria and Sakhalin Island, more forested regions which found it easier to support the lifestyles of the northern nomads, we saw population movements, regional wars and conflicts, and occasional refugees or raids impinging on Japan, Korea and China.

For the most part, the southern civilizations had little awareness of what was going on in the north. There was a perception that the northern barbarians were more volatile, more prone to raiding, less amenable to trading. The states of warfare which existed between tribes on their borders gave no real clue that there was an expanding culture far to the north. Reports of the Thule expansion were erratic, disconnected and out of context. The successive waves of conflict moving south from the Thule got in the way of any real contact or communication with the Thule. The civilizations of the south and the new power in the north remained blissfully ignorant of each other.
 
The Musk Ox Goes West

In North America, domestication of the Musk Ox took place later, roughly 1350, but in certain regions, once domesticated, they expanded rapidly. Musk Ox were large animals, 350 to 450 kg, preferring colder and dryer climates than Caribou. Typically non-migratory, they had not survived hunting and climate shifts in Asia, and had become extinct there.


They had been domesticated by embattled hunter gatherers shifting to pastoralism around 1350, in part as a result of conflicts with agricultural and caribou herding Thule expanding from the South. The Musk Ox herders preferred and thrived in harsh and inhospitable landscapes that challenged even caribou. Domestication had expanded quickly through the Canadian archipelago and had followed coastal areas. The official date for the expansion of Musk Ox into Alaska was around 1400, but there’s some evidence of domesticated Musk Ox on the bering peninsula as early as 1375.

For the Thule in the far north, the Musk Ox were decisive. Along the Arctic coast of Siberia, the most northerly extensions of the Evenk and Yakut struggled to survive. Here were the outer limits of their reindeer herds, and beyond that, there were vast stretches of territory beyond reindeer limits, where only the most basic subsistence could be gained from fishing and hunting.

Musk Ox, Ptarmigan and adapted fragments of the Agricultural package allowed the Thule to exploit the Siberian Arctic coasts in ways which were far beyond anything that the native tribes could even dream of. In particular, Musk Ox represented meat, wool, leather and milk, it represented a plow and sled hauler and pack carrier, to which the Asian cultures had no real answer. Moving south, reindeer or caribou would become competitive, and even superior. Further south, horses and cattle dominated. But in the far north, Musk Ox dominated, and only the Thule held Musk Ox.

The Thule Musk Ox culture moved swiftly west along the arctic coast, displacing or eradicating coastal natives, as they established themselves, they pushed steadily south, adding and expanding Caribou, and elaborating the agricultural package. In turn, Yakut, Samoyed, Nenet and Evenk tribes fought back, with lines of demarcation generally emerging at or shortly beyond the tree lines.

Westward expansion had reached the Talmyr peninsula by approximately 1500, where they began to interact with the Eastward journeying sea Thule.
By approximately 1550-1600, the Asian Thule had reached their maximum expanses westward, almost impinging on the northernmost coasts of European Russia.

However, these territories were poor Musk Ox country, and the cultural templates that had allowed domination of the Siberian arctic no longer worked well. The indigenous cultures were better connected to the South, more densely populated and better able to resist expansion.
 
Since we've heard many hints about the particularly militaristic and somewht imperial Siberian Thule, there are going to be other shoes to drop I'm sure.

Yeah, I have to stop telegraphing these things.

I'd be happy enough with scenarios where the Thule themselves are limited, but cultural diffusion spreads the crops and the domesticates in the northlands of Asia and there's just a whole slew of Siberian civilizations developing--I shouldn't say "civilizations" in the Toynbeeian sense since they'll hardly have time or distance enough from China (and its associated neighbors Korea and Japan) Mongolia or Russia to develop deeply on their own terms entirely, but I do think the northern peoples, if the package spread, could negotiate their assimilation of these influences more on their own terms and even achieve distinct national identities.

As you can see, substantial barriers have emerged to the transmission of the Thule package to the Chuchki. A shame because in lifestyle and temperament, the Chuchki were in some ways better positioned to embrace agriculture than the Thule themselves.

I suppose there's room out there for some timeline where the Chuchki 'pull a Thule', or perhaps in the Thule universe, someone is writing a timeline where the Chuchki developed agriculture first, setting off those waves of butterflies.

Overall though, I don't think that the peaceful spread of Thule Agriculture ahead of the Thule is all that likely. Particularly not in Siberia. Setting aside the bad relations and cultural antipathy that an expanding culture inflicts on its victims, its a lifestyle question.

Generally people are conservative - they're reluctant to change their lifestyles. They'll 'enhance' their lifestyles, yes. The modern inuit embraced snowmobiles, the plains indians embraced horses, and first nations all over picked up on guns and firearms pretty quick. But these things didn't radically change the underlying lifestyle, they simply made that lifestyle easier or more productive.

Shifts from a hunter-gatherer existence to a more settled agrarian or horticultural set up is a lot harder. There's a huge difference in commitment, in lifestyle, in skill sets. Farming is often the result of a vast store of incremental knowledge.

Mostly in Europe, for instance, what we seem to find is that hunter gatherers did not take up farming. Rather, farmers moved in and pushed the hunter gatherers out. I suspect that this is the usual model for most places - Africa, Asia, the new world.

Faced with the expanding Thule, and with a growing enmity on both sides, I don't see the Chuchki or others embracing Thule ways, at least not on this phase.

I don't think its impossible that the Chuchki, the Koryak or Yakut would acquire the Thule Agricultural package, or adopt it. I simply think that if this happens, it happens later, beyond the physical limits of Thule's ability to expand, and in situations where these indigenous cultures are faced with new sets of problems and opportunities which allow them to make the leap. I would say much later, after 1700, or thereabouts.


But throughout you've stressed the tendency for Thule neighbors to have little interaction with them beyond battles and that is still the pattern here, so I guess the significant chunk of territory and political bloc that is transformed by Thule cultivation is going to in fact be Thule land; maybe the Thule get influenced by peoples they absorb by conquest but their neighbors don't; "Arctican" civilization is going to be pretty much a Thule thing.

For the next couple of centuries at least.


Or a Euro-Thule thing; the modes of contact with Thule with Europe are tending to produce a certain amount of diffusion and cross-pollination after all.

That is an interesting area to explore.

I do like the Scandinavians getting the jump on that, but sooner or later Thule-Russian contact will quite possibly be more--I certainly don't want to suggest "cordial," but anyway mutually productive, than these clashes with far eastern Siberian native peoples have been.

It'll depend on where you are. Around Talmyr, it will be pretty cordial. Around Beringia, not so much.
 
Warfare and the Siberian Thule

Several factors combined to make the Siberian Thule by far the most ruthless and warlike of all the Thule cultures.

Chief among these must be the centuries long, relentlessly escalating state of war between the Chuchki and the Thule. An early tradition of mutual raiding and poaching had intensified with agriculture to a series of vicious massacres. This had built steadily into a genocidal fury, and when the advantage finally shifted to the Thule, the lesson taken and learned was that all strangers were enemies, all enemies to be obliterated.

Against this ferocious attitude, the Chuchki had no choice but to fight with everything they had. Nor were the Yakut, the Koryak or Evenk offered any better choice. Culturally, the Siberian Thule found themselves frozen into a state of perpetual and total war with any and every neighbor.

Against the Chuchki, the traditional patterns and techniques of Thule Warfare, including ambush, deception, attack and destruction of noncombatants and resources intensified. Moreover, the tolerance and alliance between different Thule subcultures, allowed the Siberian Thule to organize and assemble different types of war groups. We saw sled cavalry being used in conjunction with infantry. Scouts, rapid response assembly, and scorched earth tactics became part of the Thule repertoire.

Indeed, the Siberian Thule, particularly in the north, favoured a form of scorched earth. The Thule of the Arctic coasts would not allow any sign of other human presence with three or four days sled ride (approximately a hundred miles) of their territories. Others found in these territories were considered threats to be killed. Even indications of presence were intolerable, and would trigger winter raiding expeditions of a week or more in duration. There were reports of Siberian Thule burning villages over 400 miles from their own settlements.

Unfortunately, most of the principal siberian rivers drained into the Arctic. This meant that in these areas there was a fairly steady record of encroachment from southern tribes, and even as time went on, from Russian and Chinese trailers. These helped to perpetuate the culture of endless war.

Another factor contributing to the warlike nature of the Siberian Thule had much to do with the history of settlement and migration. Much of the Siberian Thule had come through a series of waves of expansion from Alaska. The Alaskan Thule were the oldest and most elaborate Thule subculture, organizing itself among extended lines of kinship, obligation, alliance and fealty which came to resemble European feudalism in superficial ways.

The immigration, and succeeding waves of migration from Alaska reinforced these networks. Migrating Thule from Alaska would seek out their kin in Siberia, using these connections to grease their path. Continuing waves reinforced these contacts and connections, both back to Alaska, and within the Siberian communities. Many Siberian Thule would return to Alaska for Alaskan wives. Siberian Chieftains would seek to curry favour by welcoming Alaskan chieftains, making alliances in a variety of ways.

Marriages and alliances of fealty kept the peace between agricultural, caribou and musk ox herding subcultures, allowing coordination, but strengthening webs of mutual obligations. As the Thule subcultures rapidly expanded their territories, they relied upon and reinforced these networks of relationships and obligations. The Thule of frontier regions had strong ties to interiors, and those interiors themselves were strongly motivated to honour those ties. Honour and duty, particularly to warfare, became extreme concepts.

The result was that the Siberian Thule’s networks of kinship and alliance allowed them to draw upon a nearly bottomless well of manpower. War upon a dozen Thule one summer, you would find yourself facing hundreds the next, and thousands the season after that. The more difficult an enemy, the further and wider the call for reinforcements went out throughout Thule Siberia, and even into Alaska. Only the obliteration of the enemy from an area would release them from the call of fealty.

For these reasons, the Siberian Thule were justly feared by their enemies and renowned for their war prowess throughout the Thule realm. It was a reputation they cultivated on both sides, and prized within their subculture.

Indeed, the only peoples that the Siberian Thule did not war upon, were other Thule. Even here, occasional bloody civil wars, short lived but brutal, would break out among factions of the Siberians. But part of their warlike world was building alliances, and they were perpetually seeking to expand their networks of alliance. Hence a willingness to enter into relations with, or intermarriage with other Thule groups. This was seen through continuing close connections to Alaska, and beyond Alaska extending readily to the Archipelago and McKenzie basin and Coppermine Thule.

On the other side of the world, they found themselves allying readily with the Sea Thule when they encountered them, and were quite willing to let the Sea Thule manage relations and act as intermediaries with the strange tribes they found there. It was the Sea Thule who dealt with the Samoyed and Nenets, the British, French, the Novogorod and the Dutch, on behalf of the Siberian Thule.

Over time, of course, the Siberian Thule attitudes to and relations to strangers became somewhat more nuanced. But only somewhat. The Siberian Thule and the Russians in the 17th and 18th century found each other to be a completely appalling surprise. On the other hand, the Siberian Thule, with Alaskan assistance, were able to suppress their xenophobia to the extent of trading ivory and furs for cannon and gunpowder with British merchants on the Pacific coast.
 
 
The Siberian Exchange

Not all movement was one way. Despite the fact that most of the migrations were out of Alaska and into Siberia, people and ideas did move the other way. There of course is a long record of Siberian Thule travelling back to Alaska to find a bride, and occasionally of outcasts or exiles or the subjects of vendetta leaving Siberian territories to travel west to Alaska and beyond.

As the warlike reputation of the Siberians grew, many young Thule seeking a name or reputation would travel to Siberia for war, some returning home with scars and stories. Among the emerging polities of the mainland, particularly Hudson Bay and McKenzie basin, it became a mark of distinction to recruit Siberian warriors and war leaders. Tactics developed or perfected in Siberia proliferated west.

There were more peaceful exchanges. Siberia contributed a handful of minor arctic and sub-arctic plants to the Thule agricultural larder, and offered a further means for southern domesticated plants to make their way into the Thule world.

With respect to Claytonia, for instance, Siberia was essential to the later maturation of the plant as a domesticate. In North America, claytonia tuberosa had existed in only limited populations in portions Alaska and the McKenzie valley. Most of the claytonia which spread through the Thule realm was drawn from these. What you had then was very limited diversity from the original stock, low rates of mutation or phenotype expression, and eventually domesticated forms that weren’t a huge improvement over wild varieties, with little flexibility.

On the other hand, Claytonia was widespread in Siberia, and the areas accessible to the Thule contained as much as ten to twenty times as much genetic diversity as North America. From about 1350 on, Asian specimens and seeds began making their way into North America, and the resulting hybrids allowed for a new diversity of traits and features. Claytonia improved as a domesticated plant, producing larger and more edible roots, varieties that could be cultivated more easily and in more conditions.

By 1700, Claytonia had evolved through the Thule realm to the stage of a mature and reliable domesticate, far more productive than even a few centuries before.

The effect was less pronounced with respect to Bistort and Sweetvetch, both of which had substantial ranges and diversity in North America. And it was minimal with respect to Roseroot, and nonexistent with respect to Kvan, which were European in origin. However, as a whole, siberian seeds, plants and root cuttings had an appreciable contribution to the Thule package.
 
LEGACIES, THE STORY OF THE NORSE IN GREENLAND
I just discovered your TL and it's fantastic: at last a realistic, documented, non-cliché TL... so I realize I might be a bit late for this but:

- about the Norse interchange: what are Norse without mead? and then how could it not spread to the Thule? (even setting aside the cliché with native Americans and alcohol) As you said earlier, water sanitization depends on either boiling or alcohol, and the former is impracticable given the scarcity of wood available to the Thule. That's one point for mead. Moreover, the tundra seems to have enough flowering plants to sustain bees (not sure about the climate though) and a pollinizer would be a useful addition to the agricultural suite.

- the idea of a Norse undercaste, ("protected" by the Ellesmerians for example) is excellent: their main activities (metal tinkering, soapstone carving, maybe bog iron harvesting and wool trading) are all suited to a nomadic, Romani-like lifestyle (as the demand for all of these is very spread and not enough to sustain a sedentary lifestyle). Plus these blond, moss-faced guys are likely to become novelties by themselves (think for example of the demand for exotic slaves, whether Numid or Cimmerian, in the Roman empire), so some of them will be "pets" of local chieftains, which will help the diaspora form in all the Thule domains. (To help the few hundred Norse form a sizeable diaspora: interbreed them with Thule and assume hypodescent, which seems reasonable).

- the speed of emergence of new, domesticated forms of cultivated plants also seems a bit fast in a purely empirical context... is there any data about the yield of Sumerian grain vs. wild variants?

- it seems a given that Caribou are generally too small for them to be mounted, especially for military uses. However. Remember that for this very same reason, horses were harnessed more than 1000 years before being mounted... Caribou-drawn war sleds? or even more ferocious: dog-drawn war sleds?

On an unrelated topic: I find the expansion of the Thule, from Norse contact onward, to be unrealistically fast, in both geographic and demographic terms... As Greenland, esp. the Eastern coast, is only a fringe territory of the Thule culture, and moreover the weather is hitting them quite hard (leading to slower population expansion), I don't see how they will find the manpower to expand to new islands. Furthermore, with harsher climate, the problem is not a too small territory, but rather more manpower will be required to refine the planting terraces (a la Ellesmere).

Moreover, even in the medieval warm period, one imagines that the demographic expansion will not so much result in geographic spreading as in internal growth. Look at the European clearances in the same period: demographic growth was mostly in situ, with the conquest of new terrain. Especially with the slow-growing Arctic plants, I don't see how geographic spread could be that fast. You documented yourself that southward spread was slow and difficult, due to this slow growth.
Likewise, describing Alaska as feudal a mere 300 years after it developed (a low-density version of) agriculture seems extremely fast. Are New Guineans feudal? Were ancient Egypt and Sumeria feudal a few centuries after developing (extremely productive) agriculture? I don't think so. The closest example I can think of is Germany in late Antiquity, but feudality was largely imported at the same time as agriculture from the late Romans.

Maybe we should give an idea of the population of the various parts of the Thule culture at various dates, taking into account also the negative effects of internal wars, epidemics, and bad climate (for example the initial spread of Bruce and the displacement wars likely took a heavy toll on the population). I'm also concerned about access to water for all these people, and about local deforestation...

In the same vein, the Shamans look like a coordinated class of geniuses. Given that information diffuses slowly (esp. pre-Grandfather), the "coordinated" part is a bit much. Likewise, it seems likely that most Shamans, particularly in the more stable core territories, will mostly be concerned with preservation of their individual status, and therefore quite conservative. This also applies to the individual farmers, given cultivation methods that are extremely labor-intensive.

Phew, that's all. But mostly, I enjoyed your(*) work a lot, and hope the few last pages that I did not read yet will be as fun as the beginning!
(*) (I mean of both original TL authors and all useful comments)

--- (fast edit) that's not all actually: in my view, the Thule that land in Iceland (if any) are not going anywhere. As the North and West of Iceland are the Norse-populated part, there is no chance that the Thule can settle there under the radar (any fire or fishing boat will give them away, for example). Moreover, given that Eastern Greenland is really the sparsely populated, underdeveloped end of the Thule world, and given their naval technology, if any Thule land, they will be very few (one or two umiak at most?). Finally, about agriculture: the "best" (read: not-too-bad) lands are already occupied (I assume that both Thule and Norse are interested in southward-facing slopes and valleys protected from the wind but with good water access...). The powerful Church will be hostile to any incoming heathens, and the Thule quite unlikely to convert. Moreover, their Caribou flocks will be killed by the sheep, and their agriculture needs _at least_ three years (plus probably 20 more years of careful mound-building), so the results are unlikely to either impress the Norse or even feed the Thule (and in biological warfare, I think that granting Bruce a draw vs smallpox is quite generous). And in case of armed conflict, unless they have a big numerical or strategic advantage (for example being led by omniscient geniuses Shamans), we all know that they are toast.
 
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Roseroot and the Norse/Thule Interchange

1525 - The Icelandic Althing rules that all Thule tithes are to be paid in Roseroot.

1526 - The demand in Europe exceeds the Icelandic production of Roseroot. Werner Grotious writes of the possibility of obtaining seeds of the ‘marvellous plant’ and growing it in Germany. Cultivation efforts are made, initially by Germans and then by Danes, but they are unsuccessful.

Again, too fast... Even seriously addictive stuff such as chocolate and coffee spread only very slowly to Europe. TTL has a roseroot craze ten years after first contact!? And btw, there is the concurrence effect, as roseroot emerges precisely at the same time as lots of other interesting stuff such as tomato, chilis and tobacco, so the offer/demand ratio is not that good.

Moreover, I would see the spread of roseroot as driven (initially) by Icelandic people more than Danes, as they are the ones trying to promote their home-grown cash crop. The Danes are already trading amber and ores and so on. The Icelanders are even likely to develop a form of plantation economy, with slave Thule...
 
- about the Norse interchange: what are Norse without mead? and then how could it not spread to the Thule? (even setting aside the cliché with native Americans and alcohol) As you said earlier, water sanitization depends on either boiling or alcohol, and the former is impracticable given the scarcity of wood available to the Thule. That's one point for mead. Moreover, the tundra seems to have enough flowering plants to sustain bees (not sure about the climate though) and a pollinizer would be a useful addition to the agricultural suite.

I actually thought about that.

The principal norse drink was beer, made from fermenting grains. In fact, most of the grain growing in Iceland was barley for beer. I don't think that grains were grown by this time in Greenland, so I suspect that their potable was a weak beer from fermented root vegetables. Pretty rancid stuff I'd bet, and on that basis unlikely to cross over in any big way.

About mead. Here's the thing, you know how the Norse got their honey? They'd slice off the top of a hive. Essentially, they'd have to destroy the entire hive to get at the honey. That made mead an extremely expensive and difficult to procure drink, it was restricted to special occasions, ceremonial occasions, and often to the wealthy. By this time, the Greenland colony was pretty impoverished, I don't think that mead would appear except as a very occasional drink by this time, and the likelihood of transmission is low.


I think that for a lot of cultural transmissions, generally you need recurrent exposures, some clear accessibility to the underlying technology, and an opportunity for welcome and spread. It's not like someone sees something good once, and it spreads. I just don't see meeting that threshold. At best, it might pass into stories as some sort of magical drink of the vanished moss-faces.

You are correct in that there are a lot of pollinating plants, and there are arctic species of bee. But from what I can tell, they're not particularly notable for forming large hives or producing honey. And Norse beekeeping doesn't seem to have been particularly sophisticated.

So, sadly, mead doesn't become part of the interchange. Pity.

- the idea of a Norse undercaste, ("protected" by the Ellesmerians for example) is excellent: their main activities (metal tinkering, soapstone carving, maybe bog iron harvesting and wool trading) are all suited to a nomadic, Romani-like lifestyle (as the demand for all of these is very spread and not enough to sustain a sedentary lifestyle). Plus these blond, moss-faced guys are likely to become novelties by themselves (think for example of the demand for exotic slaves, whether Numid or Cimmerian, in the Roman empire), so some of them will be "pets" of local chieftains, which will help the diaspora form in all the Thule domains. (To help the few hundred Norse form a sizeable diaspora: interbreed them with Thule and assume hypodescent, which seems reasonable).

It's a fun idea, but unfortunately, the Norse don't survive to form a viable undercaste. Most of them remain in southern greenland where their continued decline is reinforced by Thule immigrants taking up space, and by unwise involvement in the Thule displacement wars. There's a small colony of perhaps a dozen or couple of dozen Norse males who are established for a time up at Cape York, but these either return south, or get absorbed into Thule families.

In any case, its not clear that the social window is open to them, or how able they are to access it.

The Romani and Jews were already a nomadized people, driven from their homes, and lacking lands or stability. This doesn't strike me as being the Greenland Norse. Indeed, their few and diminishing advantages dealing with the Thule, or surviving in the worsening climate, lay in holding close to the lands.

As for the Thule, I'm not sure that their culture at the time has available open space for this sort of undercaste. I'm thinking of Bantu moving into Pigmy and Khoi territories. The Bantu were a relatively sophisticated agricultural and herding culture, mostly they displaced or drove out their hunter-gatherer rivals. I don't believe that at the window of contact, the Thule around Greenland are sophisticated enough to endorse an underclass, and while other aspects of Thule elsewhere are able to sustain a network of displaced and transients (the emerging trading networks, particularly Ellesmere) these roles are being filled by Thule groups themselves.

It's a conundrum. An earlier contact involves a more robust Norse, but a less sophisticated Thule. A later contact involves more sophisticated Thule but a more attenuated Norse. So, interesting idea, but my decision was not to go down that road.

- the speed of emergence of new, domesticated forms of cultivated plants also seems a bit fast in a purely empirical context... is there any data about the yield of Sumerian grain vs. wild variants?

Wish there was. I didn't find a lot of literature assessing how rapidly plants shifted from wild to domesticated forms, or how wild and domesticated forms compared. It's a complicated area, complicated more so by the issue of cross pollinations. Where agriculture is widespread, it becomes difficult to say that wild forms are truly wild, or merely feral, or to assert that there's no contamination by domesticated traits.

What it comes down to is that domesticated froms will tend to diverge from wild forms in several different possible ways - larger yields in the form of larger seeds or fruit, more accessibility in that there's less toxicity or that such things as shell's or skins become thinner, more reliability in that maturity or ripening tends to happen all at once or within a shorter period of time, and a greater tolerance of density. There are more, but those are some of the key ones.

How quickly does the divergence happen? I don't think that there's any real guideline. Rather, I think that this is a factor of the phenotypical diversity of the wild species. The more genetic diversity within the wild species, the more diverse expression of traits. If you have a wide variety of traits to select from, then harvesting and cultivation will start to intensively select for certain traits, which become dominant, and your 'domesticated' plant starts to emerge.

What's a good marker for genetic diversity? My thinking is geographical distribution. The more widely a plant is distributed, the likelihood is that the longer it has been around. ie, a plant whose range is a million square miles has likely had more time to spread than a plant with a few thousand square miles range. A million square miles distribution also means a much greater population of plants which encourages diversity, and remoteness of plants from each other at different parts of their range, which allows for diversity.

Further, as agriculture itself spreads geographically, there's more opportunity for farmers to encounter different wild phenotypes, and to 'harvest' positive or useful traits from local wild populations. These then spread rapidly through the domesticated population.

So as I assessed things, plants like sweetvetch and bistort seemed to offer a lot of potential for developing domesticated forms rapidly.

On the other hand, plants like claytonia, with a very limited and delicate range in North America likely sported less diversity - they were likely asian imports drawn from a small transplanted 'founder' population.

My assessment was that sweetvetch and bistort would tend to be rapidly developed into productive domesticated forms, claytonia would develop more slowly... at least until eastward flow from siberia started introducing those genes and traits and allowed for more divergence.

Other plants, like fireweed, posed problems for domestication simply because their method of reproduction - light windborn seeds made it difficult to reinforce domestic friendly traits, except under certain circumstances.

Anyway - how fast does it happen? Well, we don't have a lot of empirical data, but from the work of amateur plant and dog breeders, toodling around with very limited populations and short windows of time... I'd say it can happen very fast. You don't have the deliberate intent and genetic knowledge and selectiveness of the modern breeder. But you do have is hundreds, thousands of people doing de facto selection over possibly large ideas, so you've got a rough sorting process going on, year after year, of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of specimens.

Assuming good distribution and diversity of phenotypes, I think that perhaps within a few years, easily within a generation, you'd have a divergence sufficent enough to start driving selection choices, and an early 'pseudo-domesticated' variety. Within a few generations, perhaps a couple of hundred years, you would have something that had reached a significant portion of its domesticated potential, say 50 to 80 %, and that would be good enough for the farmers.

All the evidence I've seen suggests that you generally get to an early form of domesticated plant pretty rapidly. Closing in on that last 10 or 15% of domesticate productive potential is a lot longer process and a lot more difficult. In this ATL, I'd bet that you'd continue to see refinements into the 20th century.

But having said that, a few hundred years into their Agricultural revolution, I think that the Thule are mostly harvesting relatively mature domesticates that are signficantly more productive or easier to manage than their wild counterparts. This is one of the reasons why there will be some spread into European realms - the Europeans are getting mature plant varieties with productive capacity superior to the wild varieties that they know.

But I'm yammering. It's an interesting topic to me, and one that I can dwell on while everyone's eyes glaze over.

Suffice to say, I respect your objection, but I think my reasoning holds.


- it seems a given that Caribou are generally too small for them to be mounted, especially for military uses. However. Remember that for this very same reason, horses were harnessed more than 1000 years before being mounted... Caribou-drawn war sleds? or even more ferocious: dog-drawn war sleds?

Generally so. Mostly, sleds are ridden up to the edges of a battle, the warriors disembark and then run at the enemy or shoot arrows at them. I think that the tactic is similar to dragoons, who would ride horses but dismount to fight.

It's probably difficult to persuade caribou or dogs pulling a sleigh to go right into a dangerous scary situation. Not a lot of fine control, and too much opportunity for the animal to decide to go elsewhere. And if two or more animals pulling a sleigh have different ideas about where elsewhere is... well, you're screwed.

Or if one of the sleigh pullers are killed... well, you may have just screwed up the rest of them... and yourself.

There may be situations, and there may be an evolving tactic of shooting arrows or throwing lances from moving sleds, and even some form of jousting in certain circumstances, where combatants glide past each other or glide past victims, and launch things at them or at each other.

But mostly, actual fighting warfare is on foot, or stealth or ambush, derived from hunting tactics.

Doesn't mean that caribou and dog sleds are useless in war. In fact they're essential at getting warriors, including large numbers of warriors to the site of battle, in scouting out territory, and in carrying large volumes of supplies and weapons.


On an unrelated topic: I find the expansion of the Thule, from Norse contact onward, to be unrealistically fast, in both geographic and demographic terms...

I respect that. Personally, I find the OTL expansion of the Thule culture pretty implausible. I mean, essentially, you had an Alaska based tribe, and within a couple of centuries, they've overrun a territory the size of Europe - moreover, its an appalling inhospitable territory full of geographical barriers. But we're kind of stuck with that, what with it being reality and all.

But back to your issue: I can treat this as a dispute, in which case we can disagree. Or I can treat this as a question, in which case, its up to me to come up with a plausible answer.

So I will treat this as a question, the question being: Why do fast and so many?

Okay - let's go back to the OTL model of what happened. What I believe was going on was that you had a hunter-gatherer population in Alaska that reached a population density where it (or portions of it) was forced to move. This may have not been just a matter of accumulating population density, but of weather or climate factors or resource depletion that significantly reduced carrying capacity, but so be it.

Anyway, they move into new virgin territory, living is good, they have babies. But sooner or later, they kill all the low hanging caribou, the territory starts to deplete, and some of them have to move on, with the remainder hanging on in perhaps a less productive territory. Rinse and repeat, and you've got the Thule sweeping all the way out to Greenland in a mere couple of centuries.

The same process is happening in the ATL, with a couple of differences. First, because of a minor cultural shift, the population density in Alaska is greater - so the expansion starts a little earlier (assuming driven by climate shift or depletion) - and it has greater momentum (there's a larger population which is moving outwards).

Moving into new territories, a larger population spreads further and faster. The model gets similar at this point - hunter gatherers, living off a bountiful land, and reproducing, and depleting it until the population has to spread.

There's a small wrinkle here, in that while the small cultural shift to harvesting plants allows greater population density, in the new lands, there's not that much harvesting opportunity. Rather, harvesting capacity is built up gradually with proto-agricultural practices. So the depletion model is a bit more complicated, and its got a couple of slopes. The end result is that you have higher overall population densities moving along.

So the Thule hit Greenland, more or less on the same schedule, or slightly earlier, and with slightly more density than OTL.

Now, thing with population density, is that it is regulated by carrying capacity. Things fill up real fast. Take a number, double it every generation , and keep on doubling it, you would be surprised how fast you get up to big numbers. A starting population of 10,000, assuming doubling every 25 years, will give you about 1,280,000 people in about 200 years. This usually doesn't happen because there are limiting factors, but where there is virgin territory for expansion, it can fill up with breathtaking speed.

In this ATL, the Thule have evolved a set of lifestyles - herding, herding horticulture, and agriculture, and even trading, along with a suite of plants and animals, which have allowed for much greater population densities.

So Greenland is, necessarily, much more heavily populated than ATL, and that density establishes in a relatively short time.

Now, the other thing that you have to keep in mind about Greenland and the Norse Interchange, is that it has with the Norse Interchange - experienced a 'gold rush', literally and with intensity in the form of Iron - (starting in Cape York with meteor Iron, down to Disko Bay with telluric iron, and the down to the Eastern Settlement with norse Iron.

Wealth draws people, and at this time, the Thule are densely populated enough, and advanced enough, that a 'gold rush' will draw people in, and support local population's natural expansion.

Nor is the gold rush confined to Iron. As the iron craze stabilizes, you've got the emergence of secondary products - wool and woolen goods, and soapstone carvings, and the emergence and spread of a new suite of plants and animals.

The bottom line is that the effect of the Norse Interchange is to produce a population boom in Greenland. Greenland's not actually that big - although the island is huge, 90% of it is glaciated, so the actual land is only about 80% square miles - smaller than England, a fraction the size of France. Not all of that is useable, even by the Thule, and its spread out in a ribbon.

Anyway, by the time the effects of the Norse Interchange flatten out, Greenland is not only populated, its overpopulated. A problem which is worsened by the fact that climate is getting worse.

And there's not a lot of place to go to. There are no new expansive lands waiting south, just more Thule, themselves overpopulated and facing worsening climate, but more able to defend themselves. Go north, things get worse, and even leaving Greenland to go down Ellesmere is tough slogging.

The East Coast Thule don't have a lot of options to leave, which is why they are forced to exploit their environment in novel ways - like whaling. When Svalbard and Iceland are found, there are already population surpluses willing to take the chance on new lands.

Svalbard's carrying capacity, to start with, isn't that great. It's pretty barren and mostly glacier. Over time, you can build that carrying capacity up, by gradual mound building, microclimate engineering, importing ptarmigan, plants, caribou, etc. But if you discover Franz Josef, it's just as easy to go there. So the leapfrog and colonizations take place fairly quickly, and the populations build pretty fast.

There are some near-historical precedents. Take Iceland, that reached its medieval maximum - maybe 70,000 people, within a century of discovery, to the point where it was able to found or support secondary colonies in Greenland and Vinland. Iceland, in terms of what the Thule were encountering further north, is huge, but it still fills up very fast.

The other precedent is the Polynesian expansion, and the near stunning way that the Polynesian islands were discovered, filled up, and became the site of new colonizations which rapidly filled up new Islands.

The expansion of the Sea Thule is rapid, but overall, takes a couple of hundred years. It's not out of step, in my view with what we saw happen elsewhere.

So... my response. I believe its plausible. Now, perhaps I've persuaded you, perhaps not. But if not, let's say that I've made an honest attempt, and at least hold an arguable position, and we'll agree to disagree.

How's that?

As Greenland, esp. the Eastern coast, is only a fringe territory of the Thule culture, and moreover the weather is hitting them quite hard (leading to slower population expansion), I don't see how they will find the manpower to expand to new islands. Furthermore, with harsher climate, the problem is not a too small territory, but rather more manpower will be required to refine the planting terraces (a la Ellesmere).

I've spoken at length. I'll just add a thought. Bad weather won't slow population expansion. Starvation will. People as a whole don't enjoy starvation, and if there's a way to avoid it - embracing new lifestyles, or exploiting new lands, they will. Once they've avoided starvation, they tend to expand to the point where starvation becomes a haunting prospect.

In the long run, it all balances out. In the short run, it can get messy and complicated.

Moreover, even in the medieval warm period, one imagines that the demographic expansion will not so much result in geographic spreading as in internal growth. Look at the European clearances in the same period:

Well, yes and no. In situ in most places because there were not a lot of opportunities to expand. Most places you could conquer or move to were filled with Europeans using the same technology and techniques. But in fact, if you look to Northern Europe, you'll find that Iceland fills up very fast once discovered, as do the Hebrides. In Scandinavia and the area of the White Sea, you have the expanding Norse and Pomors pushing the Samoyed out of their territories, or reducing them to marginal presences.

That said, even in Europe, where the various peoples were at much more equal levels of technology and production, there was quite a lot of pushing back and forth.

Especially with the slow-growing Arctic plants, I don't see how geographic spread could be that fast. You documented yourself that southward spread was slow and difficult, due to this slow growth.

The difference in spreading south though was not just slow growth, but the fact that people were already living there. Once you had established your three year production cycle, you could sustain a population that would guarantee your mastery of a territory.

The trouble was that it was extremely difficult to build that three year population production cycle from scratch with people shooting arrows at you.

Think of it in terms of comparative population densities. A hunter gatherer group could sustain a density of 1, agriculturalists sustain a density of 10. So Agriculturalists overwhelm and drive out the lonely hunter gatherer.

But Thule agriculture needed a bit of time to gear up. During that time, its only looking at a population density of 2 or 3. Well, that's competitive, and a dedicated hunter gatherer population is not overwhelmed. Their own population density is such that they're in a position to resist. And the commitment to agriculture brings with it downsides (lack of mobility and flexibility) that make them more vulnerable, neutralizing their small numerical advantage.

Doesn't mean southward expansion doesn't happen, but under normal circumstances, its quite difficult and slow. The big southern expansions of the Thule came from massive demographic dislocations - when huge population densities of Thule showed up, overwhelmed the hunter gatherers completely, and then proceeded to starve in large numbers while their infrastructure and productivity tried to catch up.

It's much much easier when there's no native population to contend with, as they found on Franz Josef, Svalbard, etc. Or easier when you've already obliterated your rivals, as the Thule had done with the Dorset.


Likewise, describing Alaska as feudal a mere 300 years after it developed (a low-density version of) agriculture seems extremely fast. Are New Guineans feudal? Were ancient Egypt and Sumeria feudal a few centuries after developing (extremely productive) agriculture? I don't think so. The closest example I can think of is Germany in late Antiquity, but feudality was largely imported at the same time as agriculture from the late Romans.

I see what you're getting at here, and I certainly respect your point. Alaska is not truly feudal in the way we know, but it's got enough analogous features that we can apply the term somewhat. Call it 'feudal-like' or 'pseudo-feudal.'

Essentially what's happened in Alaska is a form of delayed cultural transition. Alaska was richer territory than most of the lands the Thule moved into, it was more conservative and had less driving need to innovate. It could sustain a greater population, and the tradition for excess population was to leave. So it tended to delay the tipping point into agriculture. That didn't happen until much later, with much larger population densities, and in different circumstances.

But what's Alaska like in the meantime. Basically, they remained modified hunter/gatherer societies, at higher population levels. These societies tend to be dominated by headmen, ie, chiefs or chieftains who lead bands around, and who follow or subordinate to greater or more influential chiefs, and who have their own subordinates. It's got an element of fluidity, but it's quite hierarchical, and relative status is often handed down through generations.

At the same time, because people are mobile, there's a lot of emphasis on kinship, bridges and linkages among bands and communities. For more settled populations, local identity takes priority. But when you are constantly moving through territories, and rubbing shoulders with other groups, then concepts of identity, alliance and obligation are more diffuse.

I'm going off on my historical reading of cree and oji, who I'm familiar with, but from what I can tell, this point generalizes to the inuit.

Now, elsewhere, the evolution of Agriculture or proto-agriculture is accompanied by a cultural evolution, the two develop sort of hand in hand, and you've got farmers and farming communities evolving gradually, transitioning from different mind sets from hunter gatherers.

But in Alaska, things happen differently. Rather, hunter-gatherer lifestyle is much more persistent, and more particularly, hunter-gatherer ways of organizing society and relationships. These are persistent, and increased population density in this circumstance has increased and intensified this form of organization, rather than weakening it as has been happening elsewhere.

When the late transition to agriculture happens, and happens rapidly, you've got a hunter-gatherer form of social organization adapting itself to a new enviroment, rather than a proto-agricultural community taking the next step.

This, come to think of it, is not to dissimilar from the process that lead to feudalism in Europe, which involved dramatic shifts by the goths from nomads and hunter-gatherers to agricultural stability, where they simply adapted their traditional forms of social organization to the new circumstance.

That's a simplification, but the parallel is there. In that sense, analogizing the Alaskan situation to feudalism is not misplaced.


Maybe we should give an idea of the population of the various parts of the Thule culture at various dates, taking into account also the negative effects of internal wars, epidemics, and bad climate (for example the initial spread of Bruce and the displacement wars likely took a heavy toll on the population). I'm also concerned about access to water for all these people, and about local deforestation...

LOL! Guy, I'm dancing as fast as I can! I'm trying to do all these things, and in sufficient levels of detail, but here we are at 65 pages and 1300 posts. I'll never get to leave!

To respond briefly. Local deforestation isn't really an issue because in much of the Thule realm, there are no trees. Or at least, none you can't step over.

In the south, the Thule are penetrating into the treeline, and there's a huge demand for wood. There are local deforestations, and the native cree and dene are generally not happy with the interlopers.

In terms of Fresh Water, the North American arctic contains more fresh water than pretty much any place on Earth that's not an ice cap. The big rivers beyond the Mississippi - the Nelson, the Churchill, the McKenzie, etc., are all draining north. The place is lousy with post-glacial lakes and permafrost (used to be under an ice cap). Thule agriculture tends to follow the model of gathering around rivers and streams, the way it does the world over, and its a more drought tolerant agriculture because of arctic conditions. Similarly, almost all of the Siberian rivers are draining north as well. So overall, not much of an issue.

There are places where water is an issue. The Canadian archipelago - Banks, Victoria, places like that, are extremely dry. Going by precipitation, those islands are a desert. There's exploitable water in permafrost to sustain the local ecology, and even ramp it up a bit, but not nearly enough for heavy use. Agriculture, even the hardy Thule variety, failed there. It was the place that they just couldn't make their model work. It was so dry even Caribou found it tough going. Instead, subsistence there shifted to Musk Ox herding and light horticulture. Population density is low, and the agricultural technology is going on at low levels, mainly to maintain and improve musk ox habitat.

In terms of climate, that's an ongoing battle for the Thule. I've written about the ongoing effects of the little ice age in several ways.

(1) as a continuing race between Thule innovation and nature, where the Thule keep pulling new things out of the hat to adjust - new domestications, improving domestications, more sophisticated mounds and mound technology, new food gathering techniques like whaling, etc.

(2) there are northern dislocations which result in things like the Ellesmere diaspora which evolves into the Ellesmere trading network, and other incremental shifts.

(3) the big crunch when nature finally outruns innovation, and leads to substantial population movements south - bad news for Innu, Cree and Dene, and ultimately bad news for many starving Thule, but which results in an expansion of southern territory... at the cost of very hostile neighbors and border war.

Displacement wars I've touched on a few times, but I really don't plan on spending too much time. It's essentially the violent mechanism for local adjustments as different subcultures optimize land use. Usually the agriculturalists win, pushing back or converting the herders and rapidly building up population density, sometimes the herders win holding or reclaiming territory not sustainable or which loses sustainability for agriculture. It can make things interesting locally, and in some places like Southern Greenland, it gets pretty ugly. But its not widespread or sustained enough to impact the population significantly. Displacement wars are mostly about flux, not crisis.

Bruce? A nasty STD to be sure, and it has impacts rippling through. But it is not near the comparative scale of HIV in OTL, and not likely to really undercut expansion.


In the same vein, the Shamans look like a coordinated class of geniuses.

Well, I've allowed the Thule a single genius - the woman who domesticated Ptarmigan. Grandfather is pretty smart, but definitely not a genius.

The class has probably accumulated a few geniuses who have failed to do anything revolutionary, and a large handful of very smart guys who have helped move things along.

The Shaman's come across looking better because I've tended, in writing about them, to ignore much of the mysticism that animates their world view and actions, and confine myself to writing about the effects of that mysticism and world view. So my fault.

That said, its not about being a class of coordinated geniuses. Rather its about a class of people who are dealing with randomness. Which way does a rabbit turn - left you eat, right you starve. Will a seal come to the breathing hole. When will caribou come, and will you be able to kill one. We live in a rational world of certainties. Hunter-gatherers lived in an irrational world of uncertainties, or randomness, of pure and simple luck.

There are two ways to deal with that. In the mainstream, you could just get good at things - become a good hunter, a good fisherman, a good harvester. But no matter how good you were, it still comes down to luck, to the intangible unseeable world. To the world of spirits, sometimes friendly, sometimes very unkind.

Spirits got to be the domain of shaman's, the irrational world of luck, that they had to wrestle with. Now, when you're trying to persuade spirits to be nice to you and yours ... well, that drives a special sort of irrational trial and error. You're basically trying all sorts of stuff in the hopes that the spirits will take to it, often based on fairly loopy theories of what spirits do or don't like. When you stumble onto something that seems to work, you hang onto it, your colleagues copy you, and the practice spreads.

Over the course of centuries, and over a few thousand practitioners, it doesn't take a coordinated class of geniuses. Just a coterie of bumblers, averages and brights, trying things out and picking things up.

The trouble with the origins of agriculture, is that there's no literary cultures around for any of the seven or eight times its independently discovered, and these events are so remote for us that it its hard to say how it happened. But my impression for archeological records and writings is that it appears that early or even founding agriculture was intimately associated with the supernatural and supernatural practitioners.

So I think its reasonable to argue for mystical traditions and magicians and shamans to be central to the emergence of a huge cultural shift like agriculture in this case, and to continue to be important.


Given that information diffuses slowly (esp. pre-Grandfather), the "coordinated" part is a bit much. Likewise, it seems likely that most Shamans, particularly in the more stable core territories, will mostly be concerned with preservation of their individual status, and therefore quite conservative.

Well, in a stable environment, conservatism works better than innovation, simply because trial and error generally produces poor results. I've written about that previously somewhere in this thread.

Any Shaman who innovates takes a risk, which means that its confined either to the relatively desperate in marginal areas, or the relatively comfort with the luxury to make an occasional try. What goes on with Shamans is that when someone stumbles onto something that actually works, that spreads.

Basically, its a mugs game trying to come up with a good idea. But its a hell of a lot easier and more profitable to steal a good idea once someone has come up with it (and there I give you the history of 85% of capitalism).

Shaman's have enough investment in their personal status, vis a vis their colleagues and rivals, that if a good idea comes along, they can't really afford not to steal it, and once they've stolen it, they can't really afford not to show it off.

This also applies to the individual farmers, given cultivation methods that are extremely labor-intensive.

Farmers are often conservative for very good reasons. As I've said, innovation unless proven out, is a dicy proposition. But innovations, once they take, do spread like wildfire. There's a lot of very interesting work out there charting the tensions and circumstances of innovation and conservatism among agricultural societies.

Phew, that's all. But mostly, I enjoyed your(*) work a lot, and hope the few last pages that I did not read yet will be as fun as the beginning!
(*) (I mean of both original TL authors and all useful comments)

Well, I hope that you found the response worthwhile. You tired me out.
 
Again, too fast... Even seriously addictive stuff such as chocolate and coffee spread only very slowly to Europe. TTL has a roseroot craze ten years after first contact!? And btw, there is the concurrence effect, as roseroot emerges precisely at the same time as lots of other interesting stuff such as tomato, chilis and tobacco, so the offer/demand ratio is not that good.

Moreover, I would see the spread of roseroot as driven (initially) by Icelandic people more than Danes, as they are the ones trying to promote their home-grown cash crop. The Danes are already trading amber and ores and so on. The Icelanders are even likely to develop a form of plantation economy, with slave Thule...

I'll disagree. I accept that it's very fast, but there's a fair bit of historical precedent for extremely rapid transmission and spread.

Coffee and chocolate spread relatively slowly, but there were serious bottlenecks associated with each of these.

On the other hand, Tobacco spread incredibly fast. Within a few years of discovery, there were Tobacco merchants in Lisbon.

East Indies spices were so epically valuable that a four ship expedition could go out, lose half its ships and cargo, and yet the pittance that made it back made everyone incredibly rich.

In this case, a few things to consider:

Roseroot is coming in along northern and scandinavian channels and trade routes.

These are areas which are most inaccessible to and most remote from pretty much all of the addictive southern trade goods - tobacco, chocolate, coffee, tea, spices. The southern stuff that gets to Scandinavia is getting there slowly, in very small quantities, is hideously expensive, and due to the length of time it takes to get it up there its not terribly 'demand responsive.'

So essentially, Roseroot, is very competitive. Because its relatively closer, its more 'demand responsive', its more accessible or potentially accessible, cheaper etc. There's more potential for quantities, the quantities to be responsive, and shorter lines of transmission and transshipment make it cheaper. It has a series of real built in advantages over its potential rivals in its region.

The other thing is that this particular 'drug' is a good fit for the market it is beginning to touch. It's a euphoric stimulant that produces feelings of energy and well being and is relatively simple to prepare and consume.

And who are the recipients? F*cking Icelanders in the middle of the little ice age. To start with they've all got seasonal affective disorder from those long winter nights, its frigging cold, they're freezing their butts off, fuel is at a premium, the economy is in the shitter, the population is dropping, the little ice age means that it's getting harder and harder to grow enough barley for a frigging beer, which means its harder and harder to even get drunk, everywhere they look, its all just depressing crap.

You go to this bunch of people, and let it about that you've got a major league pick me up.... well, they're not going to waste a lot of time. Particularly if its the sort of pick me up that has them going "Hey, the blizzard's finished, let's go out and plow some more fields so we can get an early start on spring planting!!!"

So its prone to going fast and going big in Iceland, in short order. And from there, creeping into the Hanseatic trade pretty readily, and having some cachet in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and places thereabouts.

So I'll stand by that.

As for the Icelanders driving it, compared to the Danes. Well, by this time, the Icelanders had cut down most of their stands of birch, their boats were small, and the big ships had mostly aged to pieces or were obsolete.

So the Icelanders were mostly at the mercy of seafaring nations - the English for a while had a near monopoly on the place, then the Hanseatic league, the Danes. Trade was going to be controlled by the Danes and Hanseatic league mostly. The most that Icelanders could aspire to was local agents.

As to how Iceland works itself out, whether and to what extent the Thule are subjugated or enslaved... well, we'll look to that.
 
Ouch!

--- (fast edit) that's not all actually: in my view, the Thule that land in Iceland (if any) are not going anywhere. As the North and West of Iceland are the Norse-populated part, there is no chance that the Thule can settle there under the radar (any fire or fishing boat will give them away, for example).

And they don't.

Moreover, given that Eastern Greenland is really the sparsely populated, underdeveloped end of the Thule world, and given their naval technology, if any Thule land, they will be very few (one or two umiak at most?).

I think that would actually be labrador, as the most sparsely populated and undeveloped part of the Thule realm.

Eastern Greenland, on the other hand, is a relatively sophisticated place. It was the highway of the Norse Interchange, with the Ellesmere network on the one side, and the Norse and their Iron, animals, plants and technology on the other. They were certainly sophisticated and innovative enough to meet the decline that accompanies the Norse interchange petering out with an adaptation like whaling, and deep sea fishing.


Finally, about agriculture: the "best" (read: not-too-bad) lands are already occupied (I assume that both Thule and Norse are interested in southward-facing slopes and valleys protected from the wind but with good water access...).

True, the Thule are going to be shut out of the better lands, and given or fleeing to the crappy lands. But then again, their farming and herding packages are better, allowing them to do more, adaptively and flexibly, with less.

The powerful Church will be hostile to any incoming heathens, and the Thule quite unlikely to convert.

Not quite.

Moreover, their Caribou flocks will be killed by the sheep,

By this time the Thule are familiar enough with what sheep do that they'll segregate what they can pretty quickly.

and their agriculture needs _at least_ three years (plus probably 20 more years of careful mound-building),

Correct. They're not going to go in and start their own farms. What we see are some Thule going into the deep inland as Caribou and perhaps Musk Ox herders and building on that lifestyle.

Other Thule are going to be stuck in fealty or subordinate positions to Norse as laborers and bondsmen.

As herds multiply, and the rudiments of agriculture form in the inland, the inland population density increases, and more Thule will run away from bondsman status to find work or sustenance in the forming society.

so the results are unlikely to either impress the Norse

Quite correct. It'll be a barrier to them adopting large parts of the Thule package, since the successes will be slow and mostly away from them.

(and in biological warfare, I think that granting Bruce a draw vs smallpox is quite generous).

I wouldn't make it a contest like that. But at the same time Smallpox epidemics have swept through Iceland already and burned itself out. There is going to be a higher attrition through disease for bondsmen, something that leaves the Norse irritated - their bondsmen tend to sicken and die. Which is also going to be motivation to run away - also irritating Norse. The mortality rate of the Thule settlers in Iceland is going to be relatively high, but on the other hand it makes the ramshackle early infrastructure more survivable for the rest of them.

And in case of armed conflict, unless they have a big numerical or strategic advantage (for example being led by omniscient geniuses Shamans), we all know that they are toast.

Well, there's a shortage of omniscient genius shamans in this timeline. But I promise to send you a private message if one shows up.
 
On Roseroot, East Coast Thule and Iceland

Just a few additional comments on the subject.

First, medicinal roseroot is, following the model of tobacco, almost certainly a ceremonial and exchange good among the Thule. It fits all the criteria, it preserves well, is small and light and easily transported, and packs a kick.

In OTL tobacco was a significant trade good that travelled well beyond its range and so was valuable for that purpose. For the Thule, medicinal roseroot in some small quantities is pretty much universal, so you generally won't see it traded across great distances, but you will see it widely used in ceremonies and local gift giving and trade.

The Thule at this point are still a society without cash or money, which means that exchanges often require shamanic mediation, and are driven not just by economic considerations, but by a variety of obligations and enticements - ranging from currying favour with the mighty, to taking care of the weak, to parcelling out to relatives, arranging suitable marriages, or bargaining for access to resources, luxuries and items. A substance that promotes good moods is probably a useful lubricant or such exchanges, and a desirable item of exchange in and of itself.

That's the general.

Now, we get to the East Coast Thule, as they're evolving in the wake of the Norse interchange. To start with, during the heyday of the interchange, they've got a strong role as intermediaries. They're basically sitting on the equivalent of the Thule silk road. So medicinal roseroot is going to be a particularly strong tradition with them.

Then, as circumstances worsen, as the climate cools, crops grow poorer, herders push in on former cropland, as the trade route cools, whaling evolves as a subsistence activity.

Now, thing with whaling, is that you're venturing out into deeper and deeper sea with very flimsy boat, hunting animals in their own territory big enough to kill you all. You get all the pleasures of seasickness, hypothermia, fatigue, exhaustion, the risk of being lost, of sinking, drowning, of being swamped, storms, giant waves, winds, sharks, and all those good things.

You know what I'd want, if I was doing that for a living? Lots and lots and lots of drugs. Roseroot, large quantities of it, become a vital part of any whaling expedition. It's cultivated specifically and in profusion. Expeditions that go out bring lots and lots of it with them. Ultimately, its more valuable than food, maybe even more valuable than water. It's brought along in large quantities consumed steadily during the journey, liberally imbibed during the hunt, celebrated with on the way back, and is the centerpiece of ceremonies.

The tradition is that it's just good luck and good magic to take a lot with you on any kind of sea voyage.

Alright, now let's fast forward a bit to the journey to Iceland, and the interactions of the Thule and Norse. The East Coast and Southern Thule have embarked on a major colonizing expedition, dozens or hundreds of people, plus caribou, ptarmigan, musk ox, seeds, cuttings, half grown plants, tools, etc. brought with them.

What do they bring a huge amount of, the largest amount they can justify? Medicinal roseroot. Their holds aren't stuffed full of the stuff, but they've made sure that they have a good portion of spiritual medicine to see to all their needs - a stockpile.

When they attempt to have congress and communication with the Iceland Norse, a people that they're only vaguely aware of and can barely communicate with what are they going to be employing in their ceremonies and greeting negotiations? Medicinal roseroot.

The Icelandic Norse are going to be exposed to it from very early on. It'll be an integral part of their first dealings with the Thule.

Now, let's look at things a bit from the perspective of each. What are the Thule going to be doing in Iceland a lot? Anyone? Anyone.

Yes you, way in the back.

"Getting sick!"

Yep. The major epidemics have pretty much burned themselves out in Iceland decades before, and the Icelanders are still a very isolated population and vulnerable themselves (which is why epidemics have had such high body counts). But the fact of the matter is that the Thule living in bondservice to the Icelanders are going to be steadily exposed to a variety of diseases, infections and parasites in their new world, plus they're probably going to be worked hard and not fed very well.

So there's going to be a lot of sickness among them. Death too, a lot of death. But lot's more sickness Aches, pains, sniffles, flatulence, cramps, runs, coughing, fevers etc. Some will die, a lot will just wish to die. They'll get sick, it'll be unpleasant. They'll get better, then they'll get sick with something else.

Okay, so when you are getting sick a lot, what do you want?

A nurse? Okay, settle down class, relax. A nurse, sure, but what else?

That's right.

Medicine?

Which means that the existing supply of medicinal roseroot is going to be circulating a lot, and the Thule, every Thule, is going to be trying to grow the stuff like crazy, everywhere and every chance. Growing medicine is going to be at least as important as growing food. After all, if you're getting sick all the time, who wants to eat?

So medicinal roseroot is going to be hugely important to the lifestyle and activities of the transplanted Thule in Iceland. And those who go back to lead or inspire further expeditions will make sure that lesson gets drummed in very hard.

Now, the thing with the slow cycles of Thule agriculture, is there's an element of human nature that kicks in. If you're hungry, you want to EAT NOW, its just not persuasive that your crop is going to come in next year. If you are sick, you want MEDICINE NOW. Well, whats not available is not available. You can do your stuff to try for short term gaps. But human nature also dictates that immediate desire means you are going to tend to plant more. You have a desperate need for medicine soon, you can't have it soon, you must have it later. One of the human reactions is that you just plant another crop of it, and keep planting crops of it.

So after three or four years, there's a fair bit of homegrown stuff coming on line, and productivity keeps climbing dramatically for another three to four years at least.

Of course, by this time, the surviving Thule are probably getting less and less sick, most of the nasty stuff has worked through and they're more or less intact, except for recurrent bouts. So there's likely a fairly huge social surplus of the stuff for the Thule.

A lot of that gets taken up by further and future colonizing expeditions, which in their turn do a lot of overplanting as well.

The bottom line is that somewhere say between years 5 and 15, there's a significant social surplus which starts to leak steadily towards the Norse.

Now, let's stop for a second, and take a look at what the Norse want from the Thule.

Absolutely nothing!

Settle down class, settle down. Not far from the truth, but let's look at a little more detail.

The Norse are an integrated society meeting another society, they're in a position of strength. So the question for them, is what advantage does the Thule bring to make dealing with them worthwhile. What was in Thule culture or the Thule package that was advantageous... and more important... obviously advantageous to the Norse?

Thule plants and agriculture? Good one. But there were some problems. First, Norse culture, experiencing decline, is somewhat conservative. There's going to be a resistance to new foods naturally. Second, these foods were coming from a subordinated or inferior culture, so these food items are low status. Third, the Thule agricultural cycle takes a few years to mature, and it requires expertise, not just labour but specific techniques that are quite alien to the Norse who have their own techniques, their own tools, their own crops and package.

Now, the Thule package may be quite superior to the Norse in this particular environment, and particularly in the Little Ice Age. But that's not going to be immediately obvious to the Norse. So what else?

Caribou and Musk Ox? Very good! And there is some evidence of adoption of these animals. But there are problems - any big domesticate you need to undergo a learning curve to know how to deal with them, what their tempers are like, what to watch out for, where the advantages are, how to herd them, etc. The Norse are starting from square one and that's not an attractive thing for them. They've already got their own big domesticates that they don't have to learn from scratch - they've got generations of experience in handling those. So Caribou and Musk Ox aren't as intrinsically attractive as they might be. Plus they're not particularly good milkers, which is a major downside. And then there's the fact that you can't keep them with sheep - sheep just kill them dead.

While we have some evidence of early Norse efforts for acquisition of Caribou, we see these tending to die off or be abandoned. Caribou get a reputation as an inferior or junk animal, fit only for skraelings. During later landings, the Norse don't even bother much with them. They kill a few for feasts, they wave the rest on through to the interior, they can't be bothered to take a tithe of them.

Ptarmigan? Readily adopted yes. Spreads on its own, no real advantage though to the Thule.

Come on, what else? Goods? Metal? Nope. The Thule have some iron, but its a drop in a bucket compared to what the Norse have. The Iceland norse are metal poor compared to a lot of Europeans, but in Thule terms, they're fabulously wealthy in metal. And in wool. And in a lot of ways.

This is the dichotomy that the Thule encounter with the Norse. To the Thule, they've encountered a nation of fabulously wealthy people - in our terms billionaires and millionaires, the streets paved with gold, such fabulous wealth they're throwing things away, lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills, they're marvelously extravagant. Those by the way, are the sorts of stories making it back to Greenland, a place of fabulous wealth and excess. Vast unoccupied land, and iron and bronze in insane profusion, cloth, all kinds of animals, all kinds of plants, everything. Which helps to explain why the Greenland Thule kept on coming.

The other side of the dichotomy, for the Thule, despite the fabulous wealth, these people were still practically starving, practically miserable, they shivered, they perpetuated a life style poorly adapted to the climate and they kept on perpetuating it. The Thule couldn't make sense of it. Some of those stories made it back to Greenland too, but they did nothing to dissuade people from coming out.

But we're getting back to the Norse now, what were they seeing in the Thule. Not mountains of gold, anyway. The Thule didn't have gold. Or much iron to speak of. To the Norse, the Thule were poverty stricken wretches, and that impression strongly coloured the Norse assessment. Even the things that the Thule could have offered the Norse... if it required thinking about, it was tainted with poverty and backwardness.

Labour? Good one. Yes. Less than a generation before, Iceland had lost half its population to a plague, it was recovering from a depopulation, there was a lot of vacant land, a lot of empty households, a lot of lords and householders with a desperate pressing need for labour.

So in that sense, the Thule were welcome as a labouring class. But there were downsides. First, yes, the population had collapsed. But then again, the little ice age was kicking in, and the carrying capacity of the lands had dropped. So although there was a shortage of labour, it wasn't as severe a shortage as it might have seemed. Second, as it turned out, the Thule tended to get sick a lot, or even die. Not the best thing in the world if your bondsman is throwing up every third day, not going to get that much work out of him. And there was that tendency to run away. So on the whole, not the best labourers. But if you were hard up for bondsmen, something was better than nothing.

Anything else? Okay, I see a lot of hands up. However I have a point to make about the Norse and Thule.

The Norse were, in part, a cash economy. They traded, they bartered, there were lots of exchanges based on religion or obligation, there were even labour based relationships like bondsmen. But ultimately, the standard was gold. Gold represented value, coins could be exchanged for goods and services, coins represented units of worth which were recognized.

The Thule didn't have cash. They hadn't invented money. Even Medicinal roseroot, which in some cases moved around like money, did not have those qualities for them. This whole thing of coins was a concept that they just didn't have in their tool kit.

So in an ideal world, the Norse would have demanded gold or coins, the Thule would have paid it, and everyone would be happy. But the Thule didn't have gold, or any thing like the concept of coins.

So the Norse needed a unit of value that they could demand from the Thule. something that even if it wasn't gold, the Norse could put a value upon, that they could desire, enjoy, consume or use. Something that the Thule had established a form of proprietary right to or control over. Something that the Thule could produce and provide which would be the value interface, a medium of exchange. Something that both parties could recognize and use as representing goods and services.

Yes, yes, medicinal roseroot. The spiritual or mystical, the cultural properties meant that even bondsmen exerted ownership over their plants. By the time the Norse had come to appreciate the value of roseroot, that point was largely conceded. A great many landholders and house holders would assert ownership over plants and crops, but it was frequently contested, and frankly, they simply lacked and had difficulty learning the specialized skills.

So medicinal roseroot becomes the 'cash' or 'currency' which regulates and defines the economic relationship and obligations between the Thule and the Norse, even the Thule that are running loose herding or beginning to grow their own farms in the interior.

This happens very rapidly, in part because the Thule and Norse from the start need a medium or intermedium of exchange to define their relationship. By the time the Althing fixes Roseroot as the Thule version of currency - their means of payment and exchange, it has essentially formalized a relationship which has evolved over the last ten years.
 
Ah here we are. It's time to start working ideas out for an endgame.

I'm planning a couple of relatively concise posts - cultural topics.

One is going to be on the role of the Shamanic class, now considerably diverged from its origins, and its evolution - essentially, a form of doctrinal fracturing into disciplines or schools of following. I think that Thule society is moving well past the era of the 'General Practitioner' - there are too many subcultures, too many lifestyles, and too many specific roles for Shaman's.

And maybe talk about analogies to the Thule Shamanic tradition in other societies, particularly the Islamic and Judaic traditions of scholarship. The difference is that these traditions of scholarship are organized around core doctrines. There isn't really a central unifying doctrine in Shamanic scholarship, so everyone just kind of follows their noses. But there are strengths and weaknesses to that, and I suspect that at least one trend is going to be the emergence of attempted unifying doctrines.

Anyway, I think that one of the things I get busted on a lot is the Shamanic class. I should pay some attention to that, both in practical and metaphysical terms.

Beyond that, I'm going to have to buckle down and do a final address on the history of caribou riding and caribou cavalry, just because its the sort of thing that catches fanboy imagination.

The Thule civilization is reaching its peak, its sunshine period is somewhere between 1560 and 1610 at the latest

I think that I will end the timeline mapping out the dimensions of and forms of European contact. There are a number of theatres.

* Iceland, of course.

* Scandinavian colonization, the Sea Thule, the Roseroot trade of the North Atlantic.

* Then there's the complexities of the Kara, Barents and White Sea. Not just the Sea Thule, or even the Sea Thule and Siberian Thule, but a mixed bag of British, Norwegian, Dutch, Pomors, Swedes, Samoy, Pomors, and Russians. That region is going to be dramatically more lively and contentious than OTL.

* On the other end of Siberia, there'll be the battles between the Thule and the Russians, with involvement of the British. The North American fur trade will be tougher for the British, so there's going to be a shift of emphasis towards trying to access a Siberian Fur Trade, both in the Pacific and in the White Sea.

* The big one, of course, will be the European interactions with the main Thule sphere - Greenland, Labrador, Hudson Bay, McKenzie, Alaska. I think in our timeline, Frobisher doesn't show up until 1580. In this timeline, there's already been one unsuccessful trading expedition to Greenland about 1530. Around 1540 or 50, they'll try again. And at some point after that, they're going to go sailing past Greenland - probably around 1550-1570, more likely sooner than later.

I've been reading up on diseases and the Colombian exchange. Messy stuff. But somewhat nuanced. On the one hand, you've got things like Smallpox with a 90% mortality rate at its worst. You'd think that amounts to a one two punch and its game over. But what actually went on, seems to have been somewhat complex. I'm still trying to work out all the variables.

Thinking out loud, yes, the introduction of European diseases will be devastating and repeatedly devastating. But the progress of diseases will not be uniform.

For instance, an epidemic that blazes through Greenland and the Sea Thule may burn out before it gets to Ellesmere. Long distance and low population density.

The thing is, when you've got a disease so devastating that it's got a 90% kill rate, it may simply kill everyone in a village, leaving no one to pass it on to the next village. Of course, among the Thule you've got significant (but far from uniform) population densities, and a fair degree of movement. So how far does a disease run before it runs out of hosts?

The hit on the Hudson Bay Empire will be devastating, but the rebound will be fast. Basically, its a high density area or areas dominating lower density hinterlands. The dense regions will burn out, the low density region may avoid some of the impact, and re-fill.

Effects on Baffin will be erratic. The Ellesmere network and other emerging trading networks will be devastated.

McKenzie and Alaska will be hard hit, and thrown into chaos. But they're quite remote and inaccessible, in European terms, so there's some likelihood of stabilization before Europeans can take advantage.

There's also the question of how survivable these diseases are. Even among Europeans, outbreaks were devastating. Look at records of medieval and post-medieval outbreaks, and it will turn your hair white.

But there's some argument to be made that at least some mortality comes through social breakdown - ie, the victims are in compromised environment that allows secondary infections to raid and finish them off, social disruption results in lack of food or water - dehydration and malnutrition finish off weakened bodies. Laying in your own shit or vomit is never a healthy thing to do. Symptoms like respiratory distress may kill you even while your body is fighting off the disease.

There's also the question of how sophisticated the Thule response will be. Disease in pre-renaissance cultures is often a matter of magic and spirits. Magicians are called 'medicine men' for a reason. You have a population where its magicians are a relatively sophisticated group, and which has already had some grounding in infectious diseases and epidemics through Bruce, Mona, Joan and the recent Sheep fever attacking Caribou.

So could these societies cobble together enough responses to at least limit the impact, and hold themselves together?

I suspect that in terms of progress on this timeline, I'll want to explore not just the disease exchange, but the eventual aftermath. Probably I'll conclude around 1700.
 
Hrum.

When this thread heats up, it really heats up.

OK, to start with...

Going

Sorry to hear you are getting ready to go DValdron. I can understand your reasons though.

You do seem rather pessimistic with regards to your dreams. You are a man who has already achieved many of the things I dream about - and in Green Antarctica particularly, I see evidence of a mind that can shape the sort of fiction that seems to be in demand in these days. Particularly with the lowered barriers in e-publishing these days, I'd encourage you to try putting something out on the Amazon or Kobo markets sometime. I know I'd be among your potential customers.

Collapse

I read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" last week. It gave me alot of thoughts with regards to this TL.

I noticed that the Thule agriculture package seems to owe alot to Easter Island's agricultural package. Interestingly, Jared mentions that stone mulch has been invented separately many times by many societies. But European civilization only experimented with it in the 20th Century. That reinforced my pessimism about the ability of Europeans to adopt Thule agricultural techniques, since they had already been exposed to many of the same techniques OTL, and essentially ignored them, other than treating them as scientific curiosities centuries after their first exposure to stone mulches.

Also, in the Greenland chapters, Jared speaks of OTL's Inuit/Norse exchange. Even OTL, it seems that the Inuit managed to adopt several technologies from the Norse, while the Norse managed to adopt no Inuit technologies. Mainly the Inuit adopted improved tool shapes from the Norse. That indicates to me that the Norse/Thule exchange in this TL is pretty realistic - and if anything, rather conservative.

Another item in the Greenland chapters, Jared spoke about the Inuit's whaling activity. It seemed to me that the Thule in your TL are much less enthusiastic and capable whalers than Jared portrays OTL's Greenland Inuit as being. This has always been something that felt "wrong" to me in your TL, and reading Collapse reinforced that. Yes, whaling is dangerous. The Arctic seas are dangerous. But so is the whole Thule world. Given their ability to make large skin boats (bypassing the wood shortage that made Icelanders and Greenlanders sea-shy), I think the Thule would realistically be much more involved with the sea - near coasts as well as deep seas - than you have shown so far. But perhaps Jared Diamond is overstating the Inuit's whaling abilities and perhaps I am being too gung-ho. Maybe you can set me right.

One of the constant themes in Collapse is deforestation. I've mentioned this idea before, but after reading Collapse, I think Thule logging expeditions to the Southern forests is going to be a big thing - and the big way in which the Thule contribute to environmental degradation. Wood is just hugely valuable and useful. Wood is also the sea in which the Thule's Southern enemies swim in. As soon as the Thule get iron axes in an area, I am betting we will see winter "logging armies" descending on frontier forests, clearcutting the trees, then withdrawing with their treasure before the natives can concentrate to attack them. This would give frontier Thule a valuable trade good to pay for the constant war with the Southern enemies, and result in a creeping "tundrification" that opens new lands to the Thule agricultural package and degrades the hunting for the Thule's enemies.

Thule getting ahold of plentiful (not plentiful compared to Europe of course, but a positive wealth compared to what they had before) wood is going to supercharge the civilized centers buying this wood from the frontiers of tundrification. Wooden tools, wooden boats, wooden buildings, wooden sleds, wooden toys, maybe even wooden fuel in some places - they are all going to enrich Thule civilization.

Something that Collapse brought into focus for me is the importance of soil - the robustness of soil to erosion and its fertility are hugely important, and often ignored by us moderns. How robust are the arctic soils to what the Thule are subjecting them too?

If the Thule package is compatible with Arctic soils, then it is a really big and powerful advantage. If there are ways that the Thule practices degrade their soils, that is going to be a big factor in weakening Thule in an area. Does anyone have any knowledge about Arctic soil science that could bring some clarity to this question?

Siberia

I am a little disappointed with the picture of Siberian history so far - I've never been exactly comfortable with the unrelenting omnidirectional hostility the Thule exhibit to non-Thule in this TL. I'd hoped that Siberia would be the place we'd be seeing the Thule hybridize with their neighbours. Now, this TL is your baby, and I do have a pretty positive view of human beings, so this is your call to make and it may be the more correct call. I am curious about your reasoning though. So far, the only people the Thule haven't been unrelenting murderous bastards to are the Norse in Greenland and Iceland. The only society from real history that have that sort of unrelenting hostility that I know of is the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands, which we still know nothing about really, since contact has always been a matter of kill or be killed until 1991, when the first known friendly contact was achieved by Trilokinath Pandit.

So... Why are the Thule, across all of Asia and North America (but not in Europe), so hostile to their neighbours? Where are the Thule groups who get on better with their Cree neighbours than there other Thule neighbours? Where is the trade and intermarriage that inevitably happens when human groups live together? Where are the Thule conquering or being conquered by neighbours and forming hybrid societies (OK, I remember discussion of one of those maybe existing in the Pacific Northwest, and there is Iceland). If nothing else, I'd be expecting to see Dene and Thule society merging in Alaska by 1300 at the latest.

On Planning

A Thule's-eye-view of Shamen has definitely been missing - so far we've only really seen the Shamen from a relentlessly practical perspective. Except for the walrus riding, we've not really seen the Shamen be anything other than practical and scientific. Of course, given how many opportunities the Thule are missing (i.e., about the usual rate that human societies manage), we know lots of Shamen are wasting energy on mystical mumbo-jumbo, but it would be nice to know more about the mumbo-jumbo evolution.

We really need to know alot more about the political evolution of the Thule. If you wanted another collaborator in the TL, I would love to contribute to this. I have ideas dribbling out my ears. Those ideas also link into the evolution of the Shaman class.

The Thule's political organization is going to have a big effect on how things go from 1300 on. At that point, some sort of sophisticated political structure must have arisen. What that political structure is will have a huge effect on what the various Thule societies do from then on, particularly how well they survive European contact and the plagues.

I would caution against assuming that a separate class of chiefs emerges - in many places, chiefs were forced on native societies by Europeans who wanted a "big man" to ease dealings with a native group and to make the alien natives more similar to the European worldview (i.e. that there is always a nobility, always a priest class and always a peasant class). Chiefs are not a natural occurrence, but one option out of many for organizing high-level hunter-gatherer societies or simple agricultural societies.

As far as I know, OTL Inuit never had the population densities to develop anything beyond male work/female work/shamen work with regards to labour specialization. Which means the Thule could end up with any number of ways of organizing the work or ruling their tribes (if indeed, they ever form tribes as such - again, as far as I know, the Inuit never formed a concept for a social entity larger than a family pre-contact OTL).

What is happening within the Thule heartlands has also been neglected for a while - the Mackenzie, Alaska and the Hudson coast are spoken of as being the population centers of Thule, but they are also the biggest mysteries now, since most of your writing time has been spent on the peripheries... My instinct is that as the population heartland, and the heartlands of the metal and wood industries, they are likely to be very, very interesting.

I'd like to see some examination of the interaction between the Thule and the various Christian belief systems they come into contact with. I know some other posters see the Thule as being quite resistant to Christianity - and in the early stages of contact, I would agree. But I think people are underestimating the zeal of the various Christian churches, the advantage in organization that all Christian denominations have over the Shaman class, the desire of the Shamen to resist Christianity (some Shamen may see converting to Christianity as a way of bolstering their prestige and wealth) and the huge, huge trauma that the plagues are going to cause. I can see Christianity becoming the dominant religion among the Thule during the plagues. And how that happens is going to have lots of interesting knock-on effects.

I'd like to see more discussion on the development of Thule deep sea technology and coastal society. As I have said before, I think they are highly likely to develop it, and it will have big advantages for them (shortening travel times by sailing across the open sea turns Southern Greenland and Labrador into central parts of the Thule realm, rather than peripheries, for example). If the Thule don't take to the deep sea, I would enjoy finding out why not.

I think that after 1700 there will be some very interesting times for the Thule civilization. It will be the height of the plague time, and what happens during the plagues will have alot of interesting effects I reckon. I am brimming with ideas for the 1700-1900 period. Again, maybe you would be willing to accept my collaboration and I could write some "official" posts on that part of Thule history once you had finished your own commitment to the timeline.

fasquardon
 
I see evidence of a mind that can shape the sort of fiction that seems to be in demand in these days.

I absolutely agree. I've also done self-publishing and gone some of the way toward traditional publishing (http://www.thekingdomsofevil.com/?page_id=1884), so I know a little of what to seek and what to avoid. Please let me know if I can offer any advice (off-forum, of course).

But perhaps Jared Diamond is overstating the Inuit's whaling abilities and perhaps I am being too gung-ho. Maybe you can set me right.
Well, this time-line does have a whole Sea-Thule subculture that makes contact with Iceland and colonizes the European polar islands. How much more successful could they be? I suppose there could be infiltration down the south coasts of North America and Europe and down the rivers of Sibera...

As soon as the Thule get iron axes in an area, I am betting we will see winter "logging armies" descending on frontier forests, clearcutting the trees, then withdrawing with their treasure before the natives can concentrate to attack them.
And upvote for tundrafication. The destruction of forests in and of itself might become a goal, like the destruction of buffalo herds was for white American settlers.

Wooden tools, wooden boats, wooden buildings, wooden sleds, wooden toys, maybe even wooden fuel in some places - they are all going to enrich Thule civilization.
The Thule wood-rush?

Where are the Thule groups who get on better with their Cree neighbours than there other Thule neighbours?
Perhaps we have a situation like the Crusades, where for political and economic reasons, the powers that be in the center of civilization A send armies to attack civilization B. There are settlements where A and B coexist and syncretize, but those people are always swamped by the next wave of fanatics eager to slaughter their first B. Longer-established A settlers or the descendants of A settlers are faced with the choice of publicly rejecting all B sympathies or being branded traitors. The situation with the Thule will be even worse than it was with Christians versus Muslims, because you could always convert and face (somewhat) less persecution. Thule bigotry is ethnic (the enemy speaks the wrong language). I think the only syncretization we'll see is in slave or war-bride populations or in situations where the Thule are decisively out-gunned, forcing them to turn to trade.


we know lots of Shamen are wasting energy on mystical mumbo-jumbo, but it would be nice to know more about the mumbo-jumbo evolution.
Eh, I got enough of that with walruses. I can imagine other dead-ends in similar vein. Agriculture attempted in ecologically impossible places for way too long because the presiding shaman kept getting good vibrations from the local spirits. Shamans getting messages from the spirits about how great this shaman and his family are, as opposed to those jerks who disagree with him. And so on.

>> Those ideas also link into the evolution of the Shaman class.<<
oooh

>>Chiefs are not a natural occurrence, but one option out of many for organizing high-level hunter-gatherer societies or simple agricultural societies.<<
Once your population is over Dunbar's Number, you need a ruler or rulers to keep the group from fissioning, and every people that successfully made the transition from >200 communities to <200 communities independently evolved leaders. Even Algonquin peoples, whose "chiefs" (akimaki) were more like chair-people at council sessions, had war-chiefs (neenawihtoowaki), who really DID expect obedience without question.
If the Thule are living in big groups and managing land, they will have something like a nobility.
>>And how that happens is going to have lots of interesting knock-on effects.<<
"The bloodiest part of the war between Catholicism and the new Protestantism played itself out by proxy, among the Thule people of North America and Siberia. Though in many cases only one generation removed from their ancestral belief systems, Thule Christians of one denomination gleefully slaughtered their apostate kinsmen, coincidentally gaining advanced weapons and training from their European patrons. The Thule Schism would mark the end of the Classical Thule period and the beginning of the Modern, laying the foundation of the rivalries and resentments, and innovations and power-base, that exist to this day."
:)

>>Again, maybe you would be willing to accept my collaboration and I could write some "official" posts on that part of Thule history once you had finished your own commitment to the timeline.<<
I'd love to see that.

I'd love to help, too, if I can.
 
Well, this time-line does have a whole Sea-Thule subculture that makes contact with Iceland and colonizes the European polar islands. How much more successful could they be? I suppose there could be infiltration down the south coasts of North America and Europe and down the rivers of Sibera...

Well, how I read the portrayal of the Sea Thule expansion was a people with worse sea-craft but greater population, meaning they sled across the frozen sea and successfully colonize islands due to sheer mass effort but aren't capable of real canoeing.

In Collapse, it sounds like OTL's Inuit were capable of real canoeing (being less good at it than the Polynesians, but better at it than the Pacific Northwesters). So it isn't that I am wondering how much better they could do than OTL's Inuit, I am wondering why the Thule aren't doing the deep sea whaling and sealing that their OTL brethren did, and why they aren't paddling straight across open seas that they know well in order to trade.

The destruction of forests in and of itself might become a goal, like the destruction of buffalo herds was for white American settlers.

...

The Thule wood-rush?

That's exactly what I am imagining.

Perhaps we have a situation like the Crusades, where for political and economic reasons, the powers that be in the center of civilization A send armies to attack civilization B. There are settlements where A and B coexist and syncretize, but those people are always swamped by the next wave of fanatics eager to slaughter their first B. Longer-established A settlers or the descendants of A settlers are faced with the choice of publicly rejecting all B sympathies or being branded traitors. The situation with the Thule will be even worse than it was with Christians versus Muslims, because you could always convert and face (somewhat) less persecution. Thule bigotry is ethnic (the enemy speaks the wrong language). I think the only syncretization we'll see is in slave or war-bride populations or in situations where the Thule are decisively out-gunned, forcing them to turn to trade.
The Crusades were not extended periods of unrelenting hostility though. Muslims and Christians intermarried, traded, fought for each other, all through the period. For example, the word "renegade" comes to us from the Spanish "renegado", which referred to a Christian soldier who fought for Muslims. It is all alot less tidy than modern imaginations make it seem.

Once your population is over Dunbar's Number, you need a ruler or rulers to keep the group from fissioning, and every people that successfully made the transition from >200 communities to <200 communities independently evolved leaders. Even Algonquin peoples, whose "chiefs" (akimaki) were more like chair-people at council sessions, had war-chiefs (neenawihtoowaki), who really DID expect obedience without question.
If the Thule are living in big groups and managing land, they will have something like a nobility.
Something like a nobility yes, but not necessarily a nobility. Like I say, it is a problem with many potential solutions.

A Last Thought From Collapse

I forgot to include a last thought I had after reading Collapse.

All the societies that Jared Diamond looks at spent massive amounts of effort on status symbols. Be they oversized churches and cow husbandry for the Greenlanders, Mayan temple complexes, Easter Island statues or Anisazi big houses, all poured their energies into things not relevant to (and even undermining) their survival in the bad times.

This made me think: Perhaps one of the reasons why the Thule appear so powerful currently is we don't know what status symbols they are wasting their energy on. This, like political structure, is going to affect how robust Thule society really is. If they develop a nasty enough bad habit (building massive temples on top of the best growing land, for example) and stick to it as enthusiastically as the Easter Islanders stuck to their statues, it could be enough to make them fragile in the face of European disease and invasion.

fasquardon
 
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Well, how I read the portrayal of the Sea Thule expansion was a people with worse sea-craft but greater population, meaning they sled across the frozen sea and successfully colonize islands due to sheer mass effort but aren't capable of real canoeing.

In Collapse, it sounds like OTL's Inuit were capable of real canoeing (being less good at it than the Polynesians, but better at it than the Pacific Northwesters). So it isn't that I am wondering how much better they could do than OTL's Inuit, I am wondering why the Thule aren't doing the deep sea whaling and sealing that their OTL brethren did, and why they aren't paddling straight across open seas that they know well in order to trade.

Actually, I thought it was well established that the Sea Thule emerged from OTL or comparable traditions. The kayak and perhaps the umiak were quite sea worthy. In OTL, Inuit Kayakers wound up all the way to Scotland. One way trips, certainly, and often fatal, but it shows the seaworthiness of Thule/Inuit watercraft.

In OTL, there's little question that the Thule/Inuit were skillful sailors. A large part of their subsistence economy was drawn from the water. These were people who harvested seals, walrus, beluga on a regular basis, and who consumed large amounts of fish. And if you look at a map, there's a vast archipelago of islands across the Canadian north to build cultural skills upon. In most situations, the island have closest points between islands and the mainland, or between islands and islands may be less than thirty miles. But those would be closest points, distances might open up to hundreds of miles, and we could assume that an escalating level of cultural skill would permit sea journeys of hundreds of miles between and among Islands.

East Coast greenland would not have had the nest of islands for training up skills. But I assume that some level of cultural skill would have been retained or transferred. The East Coast Thule culture shifted to embrace whaling as a livelihood, to a degree and scale that exceeded OTL. And they were hunting and harvesting the big bowhead whales. In pursuit of whales, they went further and further out to deep sea, to the points where they became aware of other land masses. As far as sailing cultures go, the Thule are not up there with the Polynesians or the Vikings or Phoenicians, but they're pretty damned capable.

The colonizing expeditions tended to be over winter ice, on boats converted to immense sleds, and drawn by armada's of caribou. Basically, that's the easiest way to transport Thule culture en masse. Agriculture takes time to establish, but if you bring a herd of Caribou with you, you have at least a basic economy transplanted.

The Polynesians were better sailors and had better craft, but they never brought anything larger than pigs, dogs or chicken with them. The Norse carried cattle, horses, sheep and pigs in their longboats, but these craft were larger and sturdier than the Thule boats, while not carrying nearly the same numbers of animals. For the Thule on their expeditions, as many or more animals came over in comparison to people.
 
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Actually, I thought it was well established that the Sea Thule emerged from OTL or comparable traditions.

My reading of the previous updates was that most Thule live in land-oriented societies, and that the East Greenland Thule are rather exceptional, being driven into whaling by the worsening climate and shadow of starvation.

Hence, after reading Collapse, I am wondering why the other Thule groups aren't doing deep sea whaling, fishing and trading. Particularly the Labrador Thule, the South Greenland Thule and the Thule living in what is now the Alaska Panhandle.

I take your point about the colonization efforts. I hadn't really thought of how difficult it would be to fit a caribou or a musk ox into an umiak and the competitive advantage that gives ice-crossing expeditions when I wrote that post (it's been a while since I've had Thule on the mind, so pardon the rust).

fasquardon
 
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