Collapse
I read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" last week. It gave me alot of thoughts with regards to this TL.
I too am an admirer of Jared Diamond's work, but it's important not to take everything uncritically. Diamond, I think is a gifted synthesizer. He's taking a lot of work by a lot of different people and putting it together, but because of that, he's not quite an expert on many of the things he discusses. He's rather in the province of reviewing and reading the work of experts and telling it to us, while relating it to the work of other experts in other fields.
Sometimes he gets things flat out wrong. He writes, for instance that the Greenland Norse starved because they did not take up fishing. But this is almost certainly inaccurate. For one thing, fish bones decompose quickly and so will not show up in middens, so their absence is not proof of their absence, if you take my meaning. Also, if you look at the late greenland culture, there's lots of mortars and pestles... but by this time, no barley or grains could grow. So what are they grinding up? Best guess is dried fish. It was probably a staple of the diet, particularly of poor diets.
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.
I actually took my inspiration for Stone Mulch from the Maori of New Zealand. They had a tropical crop package that simply would not grow in that climate. Some parts they had to abandon. But other parts they managed to make work using stone mulch or stone cover agriculture to warm the ground to the point where they could raise a tropical crop in a temperate climate... somewhat.
And to be honest, it wasn't even my idea originally, I think that's a contribution from another reader of the threads. I'd have to go back and search if you want his name.
But yes, correct, it does come up several times in non-western agriculture, particularly when there are issues of temperature.
But European civilization only experimented with it in the 20th Century.
European civilization developed an effective agricultural model, and was quite persistent with it. The thing is, when you're a top dog, you don't take new tricks from the underdgos.
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.
By and large, the Europeans felt that what they had was working for them. It's a status thing.
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.
Thank you. I'm perpetually worried about the hundred monkeys syndrome.
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.
This is really tough to answer, because I'm not sure how good a handle I have on Pre-European contact Inuit whaling. And by whaling, we're talking about the big balleen whales, not creatures like the Beluga or even Orca.
Here's how I understand things. Whales, the big ones, and particularly the far northern ones like the Bowheads are migratory animals, travelling in pods, along immense migration routes back and forth summer to winter. Most of the arctic sea mammals are migratory in that sense. A lot of these migration routes seem to be quite stable, and particularly on close approaches to land, they would tend to show up off the same shores, and in the same coves and bays, year to year, or every few years. Whether these offshore regions represented navigation landmarks, or traditional feeding grounds, I don't know. The Bowheads had a particular advantage as arctic whales in that they were adapted to smash through up to two feet of ice, creating their own breathing holes.
Inuit whale hunting therefore was an intensely seasonal thing, much like every other part of the Inuit lifestyle. You had a window of opportunity of maybe two weeks or a month during the year, when the migrating whales would be passing close to you.
The basic method of Thule or Inuit whaling was to paddle out close to the whale, and hit it with a harpoon attached to a sealskin or walrus skin bladder. The bladder would amount to a continuous drag on its swimming, making it work harder, and drawing it towards the surface.
Rinse and repeat. You would just keep putting more harpoons into the whale, and tying it to more flotation bladders, until after a day or two, the animal would be exhausted, floating on the surface, and bleeding out. After that, more harpoons until it died.
At that point, you just have the struggle of towing a fifty ton carcass in to land, not the easiest thing in the world. Beaching it at high tide. And then the whole community harvesting and flaying it low tides.
I suspect that whaling was a localized skill rather than a universal one. I'm sure that the techniques found their way into cultural lore, and may have been used as well on smaller scale creatures like seals or walrus or beluga. But it was probably a specialized thing, not all communities did it.
Having said that, I have no read at all in terms of how regular or commonplace it was or how many whales were harvested each year. It certainly went on, we've found stone harpoon tips embedded in the flesh of whales, indicating that some got away over the years.
On the other hand, it wasn't nearly at a level of the commercial whalers who impacted the population.
On the other other hand, the bowhead population seems to have been more reslient than other whale species, which implies perhaps that the Bowheads had adapted to some degree of human hunting pressure before commercial whaling.
Guessing the magnitude of inuit/thule whaling OTL is just tough. I don't know of any archeological sites that suggest massive amounts of historical or pre-historical whaling, or huge quanitities of baleen being found in archeological sites.
It's complicated by the fact that the Inuit were eventually shut out of whaling by a variety of factors, including collapse of species and monopoly of commercial whaling.
Now, looking at this ATL, can we say that whaling developed identically to OTL? Probably not. The difference here is that there's a lot more social and intellectual capital involved in land based practices. The ATL Thule simply had a greater suite of opportunities and resources available to them than the OTL inuit. So would that make, overall, less social interest in whaling? I think so.
On the other hand, the population density is greater, and the greater population is probably looking for more opportunities. So even with less proportional social interest, you might see as much or more whaling than in OTL.
So, all I can say is that it's probably similar, but with differences in terms of timing of the emergence of the skill-set, and different degrees of local emphasis and, probably different sets of details.
My inclination is to think that OTL and in most places ATL, whaling activities were probably near shore. This is a fifty or sixty ton mammal that we're talking about. Assuming you kill one, you've got to drag it to shore, that's probably not an easy thing. You wouldn't want to drag it from further than you need to. Also, killing it is probably going to take a day, or the better part of a day, so you might be lead out on quie a chase.
I'm thinking most whale kills were likely within 50 miles of shore. I'll pick an arbitrary number and say 80%. 99.9% were within 200 miles of shore.
So as far as the East Coast Thule go, I don't see them as a dramatic departure from the body of Thule culture - ie, they're not doing stuff that other Thule groups can't do, rather, they're dipping into the same well of culture and technology.
What makes them distinctive, is in the intensity of whale killing - the numbers of harvest, a sustained and regular thing, rather than an occasional, and the degree of cultural and social investment - ie, more and bigger umiaks, much more use of whale bone and balleen on a larger scale as a resource, and much deeper seafaring - including deep water sailing several hundred miles out to sea, with commensurate evolution of navigation and sailing skills.
There's some evidence that the Umiaks had sails, which might actually precede European contact. The East Coast Umiaks, whether by invention, acquisition from the Norse, or from the Thule cultural well definitely used sails, and actually used sails to help pilot dead whales into shore.
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.
Essentially yes, although the swampy cree areas that are to the south are often literally swamps of muskeg, permafrost, sands of trees, and rivers, streams and lakes running through it all. Good luck trying to log muskeg.
That said, a lot of these rivers drain north into or adjacent to Thule territories, so yes, there's going to be fairly systematic local logging.
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.
That's certainly going to be happening. It definitely won't endear them to the people of the region.
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.
I don't think we'll see tundrification. But I do think we'll see forests being replaced in parts by scrub brush, a lot more erosion in some areas, and impacts on water flow. Lots more mud, for instance, coming down rivers. Some subsidence of lands. Flooding of muskeg and negative effects from that as permafrost melts.
It will have the effect of making the lands less hospitable and predictable for those who live there, which will not endear the Thule to the southern peoples.
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.
Agreed, major wood boom. I could see owning a wooden house, or having a house supported by wooden beams being a major status symbol. Like having your ceiling plated with gold.
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?
Fairly good, as far as I can tell. Arctic soils are generally very poor soils, often bare steps above gravel, and often quite thin. Organic matter is present in artic soils, but is often very slow to decompose and release nutrients, due to overall low temperatures. Rates of biological and chemical activity tend to be slow. Spots of warmth - such as around fox dens, or in garbage dumps, are often host to blooms of productivity. The relative poverty of arctic soils, along with the short seasons is a principle reason for the long crop cycles.
Thule agriculture, particularly stone mulch and mound building, tends to be very good for arctic soils. The mounds act as wind breaks, keeping light soil particles from being distributed away. Mounds and stone mulch raise the local temperature, allowing for both more live biological activity, and for organic decomposition and chemical processes which enrich the soil. Snow cover, and drift accumulation preserves a degree of warmth, and the snow melt tends to wash soil particles down under the stone cover, as well as preserving moisture. Thule Agriculture becomes steadily more productive as time goes on, and enhances the amount of biomass in a region.
The Norse, by the way, had very good soil conservation and management techniques, which worked very well in their original homelands. The arctic and sub-arctic was just too tough for them.
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?
In a general sense, the Thule package works very well for arctic soils. How it reacts to richer southern soils is an interesting question. Some of the techniques may not be as necessary, or may be counterproductive.
In some areas, even the Thule package didn't work out so well. The textbook example is the Canadian Archipelago west of Baffin Island. The region is essentially an arctic desert with very little precipitation. Thule agriculturalists moving into a region tapped the region's water with diversion and irrigation, or pulled up permafrost. In the long run, they couldn't make it work, and the people who would become musk ox herders pushed them out.
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.
Once, when I was driving through northern Saskatchewan, I came across a town called 'North Battleford.' It was next to 'South Battleford.' I stopped and took a look around. There wasn't anything remarkable to it.
So I checked in to see why it was called 'Battleford'. A ford is just an easy crossing over a stream or river, that was simple enough. Had a battle taken place here?
It turns out that there had been an incident in the 1885 North West Rebellion. But that wasn't it - the townsfolk in that incident had fled to "Fort Battleford" - ie, the name preceded the incident.
As nearly as I could figure, the name, translated, had preceded the white settlers in the area. This had been the site of a war or battle between Indian peoples. Battle Ford. Possibly, it had often been such a site.
If you go looking around old regional place maps through the north, you find that - 'Battle Ford's, 'War Lakes', etc. Place names marking the sites of conflicts that are now lost to history.
Now the lesson here is that often people are warlike in a way that we find uncomfortable in the modern world. For a subsistence culture living off the land, moving from place to place through the seasons, the presence of strangers can be a scary thing. That rabbit that a stranger catches might have been your dinner, and because he took your rabbit, your family goes hungry.
The resources that meant survival or starvation were often unevenly distributed, sometimes bounties or good locations were thin. A preferred fishing camp near some rapids could be a valuable thing, something you were not prepared to share with strangers, and more importantly, not something you could easily replace if you were driven away from it. The next good spot for a fishing camp might be twenty miles away, and someone else might already be occupying it.
It's not always that way, of course. If circumstances allow, there are traditions of hospitality. Hell, during things like salmon runs, hundreds of people would gather, impromptu towns or villages would form. At other times, peoples passing through were quite tolerated.
But still, there was a jealous eye on resources required for survival. I remember reading historical accounts of Indians being upset over settlers cutting down trees - because as far as the Indians were concerned, those were their damned trees, they had the rights to harvest them, and their toes were being stepped on and rights infringed.
A stranger passing through could be an interesting thing. A stranger who takes a rabbit, no big deal. On the other hand, a stranger harvesting your beaver.... that's killing matters.
So relations ran the gammut. Now, let me throw a couple of variables at you.
Ease of communication made a big difference in terms of war or peace. The dakota and ojibwa were different peoples, but if they sat down, there was enough similarities in language and culture, they could make themselves understood. The degree of conflict and warfare tended to be highest when the groups were most alien to each other.
I remember a Cree friend of mine from Quebec describing how an Uncle or Grandfather had encountered an Inuit woman - the event was described in terms of supernatural terror, the woman was as much ghoul as human, they fled and they were persuaded that they had barely escaped with their lives and souls from a mortal danger. There was no sense that they had encountered a human being, and no possibility in that encounter of communication.
There's also a very graphic description of an English explorer, I think in the McKenzie valley, travelling with some Indian guides. When they encountered an Inuit family, there was nothing but war, and the explorer was horrified at the brutal murder of an inuit women by men he had come to see as friends and as decent people.
The Thule/Inuit were profoundly alien, linguistically, ethnically and culturally, to the southern peoples, and for that matter, to the asian peoples. There's no way we can quite get around that.
Even in OTL, as my examples show, they were very alien to the peoples to the South, and while there may have been peaceable contacts, the borderlands between the peoples were dangerous and murderous places.
The other observation is that stable cultures are a lot easier to have peaceful relations with than expanding cultures. The problem is that expanding cultures expand into your territory, they expand into your resources, so it becomes a matter of them or you.
In the case of the Dorset people, the Thule expansion meant obliteration, it was as simple as that.
In terms of the big wave of southern expansion, the creek, dene and innu saw it and experienced it as clearly genocidal. Suddenly, there were all these foreigners either kicking them out of their homes or killing them. The survivors moved south, displacing or joining with relatives. There wasn't a good impression left, particularly as Thule activities
Looking at the Asian expansion, one of the things I want to emphasize was that relations with the Chukchi were originally somewhat good - you had the usual reindeer rustling, bride stealing, shoving matches over this or that. But the degree of conflict was relatively low - the Thule occupied lands that the Chukchi had little use for. It was easier for the two groups to avoid each other, and engage in limited cooperation/warfare as circumstances dictate.
As the Thule accumulate cultural advantages and push hard into Chukchi territories, then you see a state of warfare escalating and becoming steadily more intense. You also see this happening along the Arctic coastal area of Siberia, as the Thule move in and essentially say over and over 'this is ours now, fuck off out of here.'
It goes to a point where some level of balance is achieved. The Thule push south until Evenk or Yakuts on Ponies bloody them right back, and at that point, their package has the advantage. Expansion stops.
Thule culture as a whole is one in rapid flux, and in terms of impacts on its neighbors, its hard to see how that is peaceable or taken as peaceable in many circumstances.
Eventually the contest for territory settles down, and things will devolve back to cattle raiding, cooperation, tribute and trade. But for that, you need stability and time.
It doesn't even mean that there are not and have not been stable peaceable contacts and exchange between the Chuchki, the Koryak, the Chuvan, the Evenk and Yakut and the Thule. The Thule at least have adopted the Evenk reindeer saddle, which is probably the best available design.
But it's unlikely that the Chuvan or Chuchki would initially adopt Thule Agriculture. That's a pretty big leap. On the other hand, they'll happily steal and herd Musk Ox, but the Thule will systematically occupy the best Musk Ox territory. For their part, the Thule would love to adopt Yakut ponies, but the ponies don't work terribly well in the regions they control.
So the exchange is going to be limited, and mostly what you'll see is a struggle to establish borders, given the land use and technology of each side. Each side will rule where its package works better than the other side, more or less. Once that stabilizes.... well, then we may see more changes. I could see the Sammi or the Chukchi adopting and adapting Thule Agriculture over the course of a hundred years or so, perhaps faster with the Sammi.
This isn't even the universal model - the Sea Thule expanded mostly into empty lands, their responses to conflict were to move away and then build some bridges. They're much more tolerant of and receptive to other cultures, so much so that they become peacemakers for the Siberian Thule.
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.
I think in Jared Diamond, he reports a case of a Polynesian expedition landing on an Island already inhabited by Polynesians, and the locals simply killed every member of the expedition except for one woman.
The Thule seem murderous, but really, mostly they left other peoples alone until circumsances opened doors wide - in the case of the Southern Expansion, it was a huge social crisis. In the case of Asia, it was an accumulation of advantages.
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?
Well, as I've said, the Sea Thule are pretty easygoing when they encounter the Sammi, the Nennets, the Europeans.
I suspect that the interface with the Dene is less genocidal, particularly in Alaska. And the Labrador Thule probably have a reasonably good relationship with the Labrador Cree.
Expansion is often disruptive, and often violent. I do apologize, but that's the story of human history.
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.
1300? I'd go 1500 or so...
