Of Ice and Men
As we head into global warming, we’re becoming increasingly aware of the way that changing climates have shifted the fortunes of past civilizations on a global basis.
From roughly 800 to 1200, the world saw the medieval warm period. A boon time for Europe, when crops thrived, grapes were grown in England, and population grew. European populations and crops in places as far north as Iceland and Estonia thrived, and a successful colonly was planted in Greenland.
Warmer weather was a mixed blessing in many areas though. Increased temperature changed rainfall patterns, stealing water away. In the new world, the medieval warm period saw prolongued droughts in the American great planes. Droughts during this period plagued both the Mayan civilization, bringing about its collapse, and the Tiwanaku civilization of the Andean altiplano.
For the Dorset culture of the Arctic, not so great. The climate shifts along the north destabilized their culture, made traditional livelihood more difficult and triggered the outbreak of the Thule who would sweep them away.
The end of the medieval warm period marked changes in the world. Starting with the 1200's, glaciers began to advance in Iceland, in Europe, in Alaska and Greenland and among the Arctic islands. In 1215 an irrigation canal in germany was overrun by a glacier. Sea ice began to thicken. Temperatures were dropping, across the north.
This drop in temperature, the end of the warm period and the bounty it provided, brought about the First Agricultural period of the Thule.
The end of the warm period was followed by a cooler era. Sometimes this is collectively known as the Little Ice Age. When the Little Ice Age begins and ends is a matter of opinion. Some consider an epoch running from roughly 1200-1300 to 1800-1850. This may be a little too general in my opinion.
A better description might be a general decline in temperatures between 1200 to 1350, between the warm and cold periods. An era we might term Medieval Glaciation, between roughly 1300-1350 and 1460. A century long warm spell between 1460 and 1560. And then the sharp ferocious cold of the genuine Little Ice Age, from 1560 to as 1850-1890.
For our purposes, the period from 1350 to 1550 is often described as the Second Thule agricultural period. Some experts prefer to divide it into two eras - 1350 to 1450 as the Second Period. And 1450 to 1550 is referrred to as the Norse Interchange, although arguably, the Norse had vanished early on in this period.
So what was going on in the world during the Second Thule agricultural period?
Major shifts in agriculture were taking place as the world was getting cooler. Grapes vanished from England and declined in Germany. Barley and cereal crops declined in Iceland, and fishing replaced them as the main food source. Glaciers continued to grow, and sea ice expanded. Greenland was often cut off as the old sea route from Iceland directly west to Greenland became impassable. The decline in the Greenland settlements begins during this time. Central Asia saw a cold wet interval, while in the Pueblo cultures of the American desert, drought caused their collapse.
For the Thule, the advance of glaciers, the drop in temperature, stalemated the advance of their Agricultural complex. The first phase had been one of almost continuous expansion. The core crops were planted, microclimate engineering developed, secondary crops emerged, a suite of domesticated animals emerged. Each new innovation had marked a substantial advance in production and productivity. Thule Agriculture was literally outrunning its climate. The climate slowly worsened, but the Thule kept pulling new rabbits out of the hat.
By 1350, pretty much all the rabbits were out of the hat. The package was there, the toolkit was there, and now there was little to do but incrementally refine what had been achieved. This was not insubstantial. Microclimate engineering became increasingly subtle and sophisticated, the mound and trench networks grew from year to year, domesticated plants were bred to be larger and more productive, new secondary plants were added, social complexity increased, the Thule became more expert not only at growing and domesticating, but arranging their economies for greater efficiency. But there were no more great leaps, at least not until the Norse interchange. Just steady accumulating progress.
Unfortunately, old man winter was also steadily accumulating, and old man winter was moving with increasing speed. Without great leaps forward, Thule agriculture could only give way. After a hundred and fifty years of winning, Thule Agriculture was beginning to lose. But it would not give up without a fight.
The effects were first seen in the Archipelago. Along the Arctic Corderilla, from Ellesmere Island, through Axel Heidberg, and Devon, down to Baffin Island, the glaciers of the Eastern Islands swelled. Growing seasons grew shorter, summer temperatures dropped.
In Ellesmere, many areas planted as cropland reverted to animal fodder. Even in those areas which sustained crops, yields declined. The Ellesmere adapted, caribou and musk ox herding rose in prominence, fishing both freshwater and seacoast increased, microlivestock proliferated. Agriculture shifted from a three year cycle to four or even five. Despite this, it was not enough. In the northern islands - Devon, Axel Heidberg and Ellesmere, more than half the population were driven out, with migrations to both of Greenland’s coasts, and down through Baffin Island to the mainland territories as far as Alaska.
Baffin Island experienced similar disruptions, though not nearly as bad. Not nearly as much cropland was given over to animal fodder, herding and microlivestock proliferated, but it came closer to making up shortfalls, agriculture maintained a three year cycle in many areas, though productivity declined. Baffin Island too saw outward migration, into Quebec and Labrador, and into the mainlands. But there were more critical changes. The Baffin Islanders responded to harsher conditions with more effort, mound complexes grew larger and more ambitious, trenches longer, irrigation and fertilizers were pushed. All of these required more labour, more social organization. Something resembling modern states began to emerge as the Baffin Island cultures fought to survive.
In the western Islands, Agriculture, a much dodgier proposition, failed almost completely. Most agricultural settlements were abandoned, their mound networks being given over to Caribou and Musk Ox, who themselves desperately needed the additional forage as their own pastures declined. The western islands had always been dry, for a time, this had been compensated by harvesting permafrost, exposing it to the sun and running it to irrigate. But after a hundred and fifty years, that was getting harder and harder to do effectively.
Instead, the western Islands were given over almost entirely to herders, supplementing their diets with fernweed and occasional relic oases where remnant crops struggled on. Overpopulated with humans and beasts, there was a small but steady stream of migration south.
On the mainland, accumulating efficiencies and productivity tended to mask the effects of declining temperatures. Population continued to grow dramatically, fueled by natural growth and by immigration from the south.
As conditions worsened, production decisions shifted. Thule population tended to move towards the areas of greatest productivity, basically the Hudson Bay inlets and the McKenzie valley basin. Regional frictions increased. There were fierce disputes over crop lands, the usage of fields, over water rights, grazing rights, over herds and wild game, and sea access.
Disputes turned into feuds, feuds became massacres, communities formed alliances, alliances became coalitions and coalitions evolved into confederations. Irregular wars broke out throughout Thule territories. Individuals and populations were evicted and displaced.
Ultimately, the Thule pushed south, down into the McKenzie valley, along the Hudson Bay coastline and throughout the line of territory, moving from Arctic deeper into sub-arctic lands and crossing the tree lines.
This was a new world to the Thule. The tundra gave way to grasslands, rivers and stands of scrub trees and bush so thick that it was impassible. The fields of bare rock and gravel vanished, green carpeted everything. Snow and rain fell more heavily. Musk Ox gave way to Wood Bison. Moose appeared along the rivers, Elk in the forests. Energy in the form of burnable vegetation was almost everywhere. Wood, a precious scarcity scavenged from the drift that piled up on seashores.... Wood grew on trees!
It was also a world that had its own inhabitants, the Cree, the Dene, the Salish and Innu peoples who lived to the south of the Thule. The Thule had emerged in an impoverished environment, and they’d perfected the art of living in it. As hunter gatherers, they had evolved technology and techniques to survive and prosper. But the hunter/gatherer Thule who had swept the Dorset aside made no headway south.
The southern nations of the Subarctic inhabited a much richer environment, and were skilled in its use. They avoided the Brush, travelling by waterways in birch canoes. They used the energy of vegetation for winter warmth, harvested the changing species through the year. They had wealth to spare, and could resist the Thule easily.
The First Agricultural period had not changed that equation dramatically. The slow three year cycle of Thule Agriculture did not transport easily to new lands. Incremental Thule settlers made very slow progress against Cree or Dene clans or tribes inclined to slaughter these strangers who intruded on their territory. Most Thule found it preferable to concentrate on their own lands, becoming more productive year by year. Why go to strange alien lands and get a spear in your guts from strange people? Life at home kept getting better.
The second agricultural period was different. Life was not getting better at home any more. It was getting worse. There were too many people, and less and less food. Crops were poorer. To make up for poor crops, you raised ptarmigan or caribou or hunted more seals. But that didn’t quite make up for things, and there were more people every day, born, growing up, travelling from other areas. People were getting hungry, and violent. There was murder in the night, and armies forming on the horizon.
You wanted a way out. You wanted a new start. You wanted not to be in the army, and not to be in the way of an army, you wanted to be able to trust your neighbor, you wanted a full belly, and a warm husband or wife, and children that you could watch grow. There were a lot of of Thule like you, and together, you possessed an impressive suite of packages, ranging from warriors and hunter gatherers, to herders and horticulturalists, to farmers of crops and raisers of livestock, to travellers capable of moving fast and carrying loads.
At the same time as this was going on, the peoples to the south, the Cree and Dene, found themselves in trouble. The Medieval Glacial period was affecting them too. Winters were becoming harsh, winter food was harder to find, summers were not as productive. Hunger was setting in. The northern Sub-Arctic tribes were in trouble, under stress, some of them were pushing south, imposing on their less stressed relatives, or dying on their spear points. They were vulnerable.
The Thule in vast numbers pushed south along their frontiers. The desperate refugees from a stressed agricultural society far outnumbered the hunter gatherers.
The Thule expansion southward had no ideology and no master plan, but it did have a consistent syndrome. The Thule, moving in numbers, slaughtered or drove off every other human it found, exterminating tribes and clans. Sometimes the defenders fled south, sometimes they fought, occasionally they won, but ultimately numbers told the tale. The Thule ruled.
This was followed by the hunger years, many reverted to hunter gathering, a bereft agricultural level population, slaughtered every animal they could find - wood buffalo, elk, moose, bears were extirpated, rabbits, otters, weasels, were trapped, even mice and voles were sought and consumed. Fish were taken from rivers and lakes, desperation brought about the adoption of nets and weirs and traps, the fishing practices of the people they evicted.
And it wasn’t enough.
Caribou, Ptarmigan and Hare were bred and slaughtered. Domesticated animals were cultivated intensively for meat. Entire herds vanished. Crops were planted, despite the knowledge they would not mature for years. Wild plants were found to be edible, either through occasionally lethal trial and error, or from the lore of displaced peoples, and harvested to the maximum. Pycrete bunkers and drying racks were hastily constructed to preserve any kind of food against the winter.
And it wasn’t enough.
Come winter, entire villages starved. In the summer, more people came down, pushed by wars or their own hunger, replacing those who had died already, bringing their herds, planting their crops, pushing even further south, hunting, gathering, fishing, harvesting, growing with a desperation driven by the will to survive. Three year crops were sometimes harvested in the first or second year. Dogs and foxes and owl were eaten.
And it was just enough.
After three or four years, the Thule crops began to come on line. Mounds and trenches were constructed. Herds of domesticated animals were swelling. The nature and idiosyncrasies of the land were learned, its resources defined and understood. The Thule Agricultural package was beginning to consolidate in the new land.
Oddly, the Thule took only limited advantage of the new resources. There was no real effort to domesticate Wood Bison, Elk or Moose. The existing domesticates of Caribou and Musk Ox were preferred, and the Thule actually invested heavily in shelters to protect the few Musk Ox that came south. The Thule experimented with beaver and muskrat as small livestock, but these efforts had at best mixed success, and were abandoned for traditional harvesting. Little in the way of new plants were added to the Thule harvest and none were domesticated. The most obvious potential candidate, wild rice, was too different from Thule traditional agriculture to be readily adopted. The big ticket item was wood, and trading networks evolved shipping wood to the coasts, and seal skins and oil inland.
After a decade, half the Thule people who had come into a particular region were dead. But the survivors had found stablity, they no longer feared hunger, the cycles of Thule life had reasserted themselves, and their agricultural and herding cultures had taken root. Over the next century, from 1350 to 1450, the Thule had effectively doubled their territory.
This begs the question, of course, as to why the Thule did not keep pushing south. Why they didn’t make their way to the Great Plains of the Prairie, to the St. Laurence and Great Lakes in the east, or to the Salish coasts of the wast.
There were a number of reasons for this. One was that resistance stiffened exponentially as they pushed further and further south. The Cree, the Dene, the Salish and Innu were all sophisticated cultures, and they knew their environments much better than the Thule did. They travelled through it on birch canoes far more effectively, had the use of dogs, they had home ground advantage and knew the terrain. They were warlike peoples in their own right. As the Thule pushed refugees south, they plowed their enemies up before them like a wall. At the southern reaches, starving Thule found themselves facing small armies or fierce guerilla campaigns. Scorched earth stole the big wildlife, and midnight raids burned their fields and slaughtered their livestock.
The Thule were coming to the limits of their technology. The pycrete silos that were essential for food storage and time shifting resources from periods of plenty to periods of scarcity were harder to build and maintain, less reliable. With less and less effective storage, it was harder to organize a society. Crops might grow faster and more abundant in richer soils with more water, but often there was too much water, and too many competing species. Musk Ox fared more and more poorly in southern rainy districts, and Ptarmigan sickened more easily.
And finally, there were the population limitations of the Thule themselves. The great southern push was from displaced surplus population. Most Thule stayed home, survived, warred or starved. Only a portion moved south. As the second agricultural period wore on, the Arctic Thule in most areas adapted to the worsening conditions, birthrates stabilized and declined, populations contracted, and greater efficiencies and productivity cushioned the worsening conditions. There were fewer and fewer displaced to push south. Only in Alaska did the Thule population continue to grow throughout the era. The Thule expanded as far as their population allowed.
The stabilization of the new Thule frontier was not the end of troubles for the Subarctic peoples. Even had there been no Thule expansion, the worsening conditions of the medieval glacial period, and the subsequent little ice age, would have pushed many south. In turn, these peoples pushing south would have come into conflict with the plains cree, the dakota and ojibwa, the agonquin and huron and iroquois, who in turn would have pushed their southern neighbors. The result would have been a series of wars and bush conflicts, population adjustments, as tribe after tribe intruded on its neighbors. Eventually attrition and resistance would blunt the effects until in the deeper south, very little effect at all was felt.
The Thule expansion only exacerbated this event. The Thule pushed hard, larger numbers of refugees pushed south more quickly, the wars were fierce. More desperation and displacement meant that the interlopers pushed south harder, producing more displacement. The ripples and dominos fell more strongly. The effects pushed further, lasted longer.
Bruce crossed from the Thule population, into the southern peoples, wreaking havoc and weakening them as their societies struggled to cope with invasion and worsening climate. This made Thule expansion easier. The effects of Bruce were worst in the subarctic. As societies further south stabilized, they learned to cope with or limit the disease quickly.
In the east, the Innu suffered most. Comparatively small in number, they had difficulty either resisting the Thule invasions, or pushing south against the much more numerous Cree. The Innu were almost wiped out, populations moving south along the coast, into newfoundland, or finding niches within Cree territory.
In the west, the Dene got the worst of it. In many areas, they were pushed to oblivion. Less numerous than the Cree, their southern borders often faced significantly different ecological zones that they were unprepared to cope with, the Dene had very little room to flee south in the face of the Thule onslought. The Dene territories became non-contiguous, their northern ranges vanished, their southern ranges pushed south only marginally. Instead of a band of territory from Hudson Bay to Alaska, the Dene were reduced to a necklace of islands of population between northern and southern enemies.
Surprisingly, there was very little adoption of the Inuit package. Partly this was because of the hatred and hostility that emerged among the Southern peoples for the Thule. Everyone in the northern ranges of the Cree, or in the remains of Innu or Dene territory, had horror and atrocity stories about the alien invaders from the north. Their language was incomprehensible. Their tactics were ruthless. Whatever they saw, they simply took. Although there was trade and exchange at times, it was very limited.
Another part of it was that the more sophisticated aspects of the Thule package, such as agriculture, tended to emerge and consolidate only after the neighbors had been killed off or displaced. There was a three to ten year period before the agricultural package really came together in a region. By that time, there wasn’t really anyone left to observe and take notes.
The Dene, readily adopted Caribou herding for instance, and very limited horticulture, from the Thule, but did not embrace agriculture or crop cultivation, although they were very well suited to take advantage of it. The Cree, whose range mostly encompassed thick bush and river pathways found very little in their territory conducive to either herding or Thule agriculture, and held to their traditional ways.
For their part, having acquired lands of trees and fish and new fur bearing animals, the Thule had little interest in the Barbarians of the south. Their society again turned inward, exploring the ramifications of their social upheavals, embracing increasing complexity and political and social consolidation.
