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

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The modern OTL range of Claytonia Tuberosa

http://www.efloras.org/object_page.aspx?object_id=13508&flora_id=1

The current distribution.
object_page.aspx
 
Roseroot (Rhodiola Rosea)

Our Time Line

If Claytonia Tuberosa, or Springbeauty, seems confined in North America to the west, to Alaska and the Yukon, then Roseroot is its opposite number. In North America, Roseroot's range is northern Labrador and Quebec and part of the Eastern Seaboard, but it extends no further west than the eastern parts of the Canadian Nunavut territory. It exists in only a fraction of the territory of Sweetvetch, and does not overlap at all with Claytonia.

Interestingly, where Claytonia is also found in Siberia, Roseroot's to be found in northern Europe, and mountainous areas in Europe and Central Asia. The two plants come to North America from opposite directions.

Like Sweetvetch and Claytonia, Roseroot is a flowering arctic perrenial. Neither the flower nor the root resembles a rose in any way, the name comes from the faint rose petal scent that the dried roots have. The plant grows about a foot and a half in height, a central bole grows numerous leafy stems which are edible. Instead of a single taproot, Roseroot produces a nest of thick edible rootlets. The thick root system requires more work in extraction and cleaning than Claytonia or Sweetvetch.

During winter, the stems die off and become animal fodder, and the plant reproduces new stems from buds at its base. The plant takes four to five years to mature.

Due to the large root system, Roseroot requires deeper soils than Sweetvetch or Claytonia, but is extremely cold tolerant, tends to favour loam or sandy loam soils. It is noted that it grows well or tolerates soils with low fertility. It is notably drought resistant and appears to require less water than Claytonia or Sweetvetch. Overall, it seems to prefer a more specialized habitat than Sweetvetch or even Claytonia, but seems to balance that with being more generally cold and drought tolerant.

While all three plants overlap to some degree, it appears that their qualities, requirements and habitat differ enough that the plants arent customarily in direct competition with each other. To put it another way, a pound of roseroot does not mean that there is a pound less of Sweetvetch or Claytonia.

Like Claytonia or Sweetvetch, the plant can reproduce from root fragments as well as seeds, and tends to grow close together in great density. Cultivation per acre is similar to corn or potatoes.

In OTL, Roseroot has been identified as a favourable plant for arctic agriculture, believe it or not. This is largely due to the herbal or medicinal properties of the plant, rather than its potential food value. Studies indicate that it improves physical and mental performance, may reduce fatigue, and may be effective in improving mood and alleviating depression. Typically, the roots are harvested, washed, chipped and dried, after which extracts are taken. You can probably find Roseroot at any health food store, the extracts at least.

In Europe, from before medieval times, Roseroot was known to the Norse and to mountain peoples as an important medicinal plant, and harvested frequently. It's penchant for flourishing in harsh environments tended to work against cultivation. In modern times, the demand for the plant outstrips the wild harvest and intensive cultivation work is being done in Alberta, Norway and Finland. It is estimated that the income of an acre of roseroot is equivalent to the value of 250 acres of canola, even adjusting for a four or five year maturation period, that's still a net of approximately 50 times the worth of Canola. There's actually a substantial amount of literature online available about this plant, and about growing and cultivation efforts.

There's significantly less information as to the edible qualities of Roseroot as food. Most of the cultures in Europe that sought it out had already ample supplies of domesticated, annual edibles. There was no particular need to domesticate Roseroot as an edible - that would involve establishing yourself in very inhospitable locations to cultivate a plant that would turn in a crop once every four or five years, and the medicinal applications were such that harvesting wild specimens was satisfactory.

By the time that the Inuit had reached Nunavut, plants had largely vanished as a significant part of their diet. It appears that both the roots and the young stems were eaten from time to time, but there to, the plant was noted for medicinal qualities.

Guessing from what I can determine of the more specialized habitat, edible root mass and the apparently longer maturation period, I would assume that Roseroots food production potential, while being significant, would be less than either Sweetvetch or Claytonia. But I would also guess that the roots rejuvenative qualities would tend to balance that out a bit.

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Alternate Time Line

Among the Thule, the key root crops were known as the Three Gifts From the Spirits, or colloquially, The Three Gifts.

Roseroot was the last of the Three Gifts to be adopted by the Thule. In doing so, we see yet another cultural innovation, as the practice of harvest of Sweetvetch and Claytonia was substantially adapted to the requirements of Roseroot.

Of the Three Gifts, Roseroot was the only one not native to or adjacent to the Thule homeland. There was no accumulated cultural lore to rely upon with regard to the harvesting of the plant, the timing of harvesting, the preparation, cooking or storage of the roots, or even such things as finding and identifying the plant, determining maturity or identifying its preferred growing habitats and requirements had to be literally developed from scratch. In all of these ways, it differed from the other two gifts.

Roseroots food and medicinal value, the rejuvenative effect that seemed to come from eating it, however, provided significant cultural motivation to pursue it. And while the requirements and characteristics of Roseroot were somewhat different, the Thule culture had adapted and incorporated harvesting and plant lore for the first two gifts, so the cultural leap involved was simply one of detail rather than a major shift.

And of course, in an important key particular, Roseroot was like the other gifts, in that it could be readily spread by seed planting or root sections, something which the Thule culture by this time had mastered thoroughly.

All they needed was to master the particular requirements of Roseroot habitat, and in this, they had received the cultural lesson of having to learn Claytonias peculiar habitat preferences. Once again, this was a situation where their previous experience, while not directly applicable, was still in the same ballpark, rather than being completely alien. So it was a cultural innovation that was well within social tolerances.

The result was that after a period of delay, Roseroot distribution began to expand as well, moving steadily west and north until all Three Gifts had overlapping ranges throughout most of the Thule territories.

Each gift on its own represented a measurable shift of available plant biomass towards human edible material. Each gift represented a separate and measurable increase in the amount of food available for human consumption in an area. And of course, with this, came increased human population.

There were other significant, if less obvious effects. The adaptations, lore and accumulating cultural practices that were evolving around and with the Three Gifts were, together with increasing population, pushing Thule society towards an agricultural revolution.

Further, adaptation of accumulated lore and cultural practices to Roseroot, opened the door for further cultural adaptation and domestication of the Thule second wave of less valuable plants during and following the agricultural revolution.
 
This is a pretty awesome TL. Very original.

I honestly can't wait to see how this affects history, and we move out of the agricultural side of things.

I am subscribing this thang.
 
This is a pretty awesome TL. Very original.

I honestly can't wait to see how this affects history, and we move out of the agricultural side of things.

I am subscribing this thang.

I'll be doing most of that descriptive part, but my computer's broke'd at the moment, so it'll be a while. :(
 
great great thread so far, cant wait to see how this society develops! It should be interesting to see how this effects other native peoples in N America... Would love to see a map!
 
It should be interesting. My interest right now is on the emergence of an agricultural revolution and the evolution of an agricultural package. I've pretty much mapped out the plant and animal species and their timetables.

But I think I'd like some feedback from my partner on this before I go much further. I don't want to run away with the thread on this.
 
So this question would be more for DirtyCommie, and we've been warned to be patient.

I was wondering, if the Ataneq invited (or summoned!) representatives of Britain, France, Portugal, and the Danish-Norwegian kingdom, where are the Russians?

Bringing in a fifth power would mean they'd need a sixth to keep the numbers even apparently.

Also, the four European powers are all maritime, while the Russian Navy in 1717 is still pretty new, having been founded by Peter the Great (assuming he wasn't butterflied; the fact that the western hemisphere continents have different names suggests some considerable divergence though not as much as it seems at first glance; for OTL North America to be named "Columbia" implies very little sensible divergence in Europe, at least southern, Mediterranean Europe, as late as 1492) in 1696 OTL.

With the Inuit having a rather later divergence than I'd have recommended, there hasn't actually been much time for them to spread their influence onto northern Siberia and the Russian Arctic coast, meanwhile the Russians proper have not made their way quite as far north as they would later.

Still I suspect by this date, if Russians in Siberia have not yet contacted peoples from their north strongly influenced by Inuit ways, the Russian authorities have probably dispatched expeditions of some kind to seek them out in the Arctic. But perhaps they came to bad ends?

Or perhaps this Ataneq, broadly though his writ may run, does not rule all Inuit, let alone all Inuit-influenced "Arcticans," and it would be someone else, in Alaska or farther west, who would be negotiating with Moscow. (It isn't clear St Petersburg exists ITTL, and if the Russians have begun contacting any Arcticans, possibly their historical path is diverted from Peter's OTL concerns with opening up paths to the west--perhaps they are drawn north instead, and this would I suspect tend to reinforce Moscow's traditional role as the capital.

Heck, if the Portuguese can be drawn this far north, surely the Russians can't be that far behind?
 
I can't really answer that, because its not quite my area. But I can offer some thoughts.

From what I've read, the Inuit language is part of the Eskimo/Aleut family, which includes the Siberian Yupik language. The root language appears to be Aleut, which diverged from both approximately 3000 years ago. Perhaps its more accurate to say that the Aleut/Inuit/Yupik common ancestor parted ways 3000 years ago.

Now, the interesting thing is that the Siberian Yupik language diverges from Inuit only a thousand years ago. We know that for two thousand years before that, the Inuit/Thule were parking in Alaska. So they must have moved from Alaska to Siberia, becoming the Yupik culture.

It looks like the Alaskan Thule culture had a two way migration - one group went West to Siberia, became isolated, possibly mixed with local cultures and diverged into the Yupik. The other group went East, making it as far as Greenland, and maintaining more cultural continuity. It may be that the expansion, still going on as late as the 1400's, had something to do with it.

So, in OTL, it seems that the Alaskan Inuit colonized a part of Siberia. The question is, in this time line, would there be further colonization? Would there be subsequent waves two or three hundred years later, as the proto-Agricultural, or Agricultural Thule crossed from Alaska, bringing a more comprehensive cultural package with them?

The evolution of Thule Culture is shaped by its environment, obviously. But in particular, its worth noting that there were two critical environmental periods that had a lot of influence.

The first is the medieval warm period, roughly 800 to 1250 during which the Thule expanded in OTL. In this timeline, they not only expand, but they evolve an agricultural complex and the population that comes with it.

The second is the Little Ice Age, actually a century long cold spell around 1400-1500, a century long spell of relative warmth, and then a really fucking cold snap 1600 to about 1700.

The exact parameters or dates of the Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are pretty indistinct and open to much debate.

But it did affect the Inuit. In OTL, for instance, the Little Ice Age caused the Thule to abandon their northernmost ranges, up around Ellesmere Island.

In this timeline, an Inuit Agricultural complex supports a lot more people. Now, its an arctic adapted package, but even so, its likely that when the little ice age hits, a large number of people are going to be on the move. Within Thule territories, thats a lot of strife and conflict. To the south and west... that's population movement.
 
Reading about the alt-Inuit's propagation efforts, particularly of svetvetch, makes me wonder about what selective pressures would be exerted by the process. It seems clear that there would be a strong pressure to increase the viability of root fragments, as only those pieces that survive long distances can be successfully transported and planted. This is a virtuous circle, as it gets easier to transplant, then more transplanting will occur, and it will be worth taking even larger distances, which will lead to more transplantation, etc.

Something else worth considering is that each community will probably be starting with a very small number of samples, so you will have interesting founder effects on the variety they'll devolop, which will only later be hybridised with other variants when the culture of seed/root exchange is developed.
 
So, basically, they've got riding caribou as an absolute technical advantage over their southerly neighbors. Otherwise their real advantage seems to be that they're adapted to the Arctic, where the Europeans can't colonize easily.
 
Sweetvetch is going to be very amenable to selection pressures because the plant is already so widely distributed. In OTL Sweetvetch is found throughout the Arctic and Sub-Arctic, extending south into the northern inland regions of the United States.

Yet the plant, like almost any arctic plant, has difficulty propagating great distances. So this wide distribution of Sweetvetch implies a vast number of individual plants and a large number of semi-isolated local populations. There's a huge amount of potential diversity waiting in Sweetvetch.

Even in the pre-agricultural period, there'll be effective selection going on. The simple act of recurring harvest and replanting will probably select for more harvest tolerant individuals - ones which regenerate faster and grow larger. Agriculture will accelerate selection, so the plant will probably move towards domesticated forms fairly quickly, within a few centuries. You'll also probably see a diversity of domesticated forms, including hyper-cold tolerant types pushing the northern limits of the range.

Claytonia and Roseroot, on the other hand, have much more limited original distribution in the Inuit range. When and as they become distributed through the Arctic by Thule culture, that's going to derive from a very limited subset of the the core population. Which means much less genetic diversity, and a lot less expression of traits.

This will drive some cultural divergence, as the most diversity of genes and traits for Claytonia and Roseroot will be in Alaska and Quebec respectively, so the communities there will have better hands to play. This will spread eventually. But even there, the overall smaller natural geographic distribution will suggest less diversity.

Sweetvetch among the Thule will have the reputation of a very adaptable plant. Claytonia and Roseroot, much less so.
 
So, basically, they've got riding caribou as an absolute technical advantage over their southerly neighbors. Otherwise their real advantage seems to be that they're adapted to the Arctic, where the Europeans can't colonize easily.

Eventually. But at this point, circa 900-1200, they haven't gotten around to domesticating Caribou yet. And even after domestication, they won't get around to riding for a few hundred years.

The larger absolute technical advantage will be the evolution of an agricultural package which provides more food, carries through bottlenecks and allows a much larger sustainable population. The downside of that package though, is that its all perrenial plants and so is not transported that easily.
 
Okay, I'm hooked.

I do wonder one thing, however. How do the Thule deal with Eurasian diseases when they come?

I mean, it looks like at minimum they adopt reindeer herding somewhere along the way. But this wouldn't necessarily give them resistance to Eurasian diseases per-se, it would give them a chance to develop some of their own and return the favor.

IOTL, after all, Inuit suffered from Eurasian diseases roughly as much as Native Americans. And IITL, they will have higher population densities, and probably continual contact up and down the entire arctic. So if anything you'd expect plague to "burn through" the entire region rapidly, rather than being introduced here and there by explorers and whalers.
 
Given the time frames, you won't get that many cross species diseases coming through, but there will be some. And we do have a few more ideas on the subject. But that's getting well ahead of ourselves. Serious European contact is still half a millenium away.
 
Eventually. But at this point, circa 900-1200, they haven't gotten around to domesticating Caribou yet. And even after domestication, they won't get around to riding for a few hundred years.

How good pack animals do reindeer make, and how long can they be ridden? I can well see that if the Inuit have domesticated Reindeer for riding and carrying packs by the start of Little Ice Age you could see a wave of migration comparable to theVölkerwanderung. Although the Inuit agricultural package may not be applicable, that doesn't mean that hungry Inuit can't sweep down south on their reindeer and enslave the locals to do their food collection for them, essentially synthesizing the Cree and Na-Dene (in East and West respectively) and Thule cultures. As Reindeer can apparently thrive as far south as Nevada, I can't see any issue with Inuit herders being able to push quite far south.
 
This is an intriguing tl.:)

I do have one question however; wouldn't the climate of northern Canada seriously hinder any attempt to form an organized civilization (as is hinted in the first update). I will reserve judgement for the moment either way
 
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