Please have these guys stay indipendent and keep their culture. They arn't murdures phycopaths unlike a culture of another of your timelines "cough" Tsalie"cough" and I actully like these guys. So can you please have them not have the same thing happen to them as what happened to pretty much all the Native Americans in OTL.
Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule
- Thread starter DirtyCommie
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Please have these guys stay indipendent and keep their culture. They arn't murdures phycopaths unlike a culture of another of your timelines "cough" Tsalie"cough" and I actully like these guys. So can you please have them not have the same thing happen to them as what happened to pretty much all the Native Americans in OTL.
Well, it'll be up to my partner. But we'll see what we can do.
The Thule will survive in some form or another, as in fact, the Quechua of the Andes and the Maya of Mesoamerica survived.
The Thule will survive in some form or another, as in fact, the Quechua of the Andes and the Maya of Mesoamerica survived.
I hope he decides to have the Thule stay as an independent nation though. Hope fully adapting the European guns after they see the benefits of it. Sence that would level the playing field. But maybe they would be at least also considered a civilized nation so they would be more gentle on them and not try to conquer them. I am part native american so I hope they won't all suffure the same defeat as Native Americans did in OTL.
DValdron I have a quistion. What made Europeans so successful in the 18th and 19th century's?
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Good question Derek, and one that people have written several books about, if I had to put it down to anything, I'd say a combination of sailing technology which allowed the Europeans to travel and trade and move vast quantities of goods worldwide, superior weapons in most cases, better technology overall, and better social organizations ranging up from states down to commercial enterprises and military units.
I would guess that the Thule have a far better chance of resisting the Europeans. For once, the extent of their culture is wide - wider than the Incans or Mesoamericans. Even if the Europeans attack them in the fringes of their territory, they'll likely wouldn't subdue them altogether.
And then the European advantages are less pronounced: it will often be to cold for their horses, and European shipping is less useful in the nordic ice. The Thule have metalworking to some extent and cavalry - thus militarily the gap to Europe is a lot smaller than that of the Incans or Mesoamericans.
Finally, there'S the question of what will happen with conquered territories. The Europeans will consider the nordic lands as barren and hostile, their own agricultural package doesn't work at all. The main trading goods will likely be furs, fish and ivory? But furs can be obtained also from European traders in the forests south of the Thule as IOTL.
And then the European advantages are less pronounced: it will often be to cold for their horses, and European shipping is less useful in the nordic ice. The Thule have metalworking to some extent and cavalry - thus militarily the gap to Europe is a lot smaller than that of the Incans or Mesoamericans.
Finally, there'S the question of what will happen with conquered territories. The Europeans will consider the nordic lands as barren and hostile, their own agricultural package doesn't work at all. The main trading goods will likely be furs, fish and ivory? But furs can be obtained also from European traders in the forests south of the Thule as IOTL.
But wouldn't by that point of time the US have the "Monroe Doctrine" which the US bassicly said the western hemisphere is off limits. And that was in the late 19th century, when I assume every nation was colonizing africa and woudn't bother with North America.
How ironic it might be 19th century America that keeps the Thule as an independent culture.
Or am I thinking of something else?
You're assuming that Klondike gold wouldn't be discovered until relatively recently.
On the other hand, a metalworking Thule culture, one that was making extensive use of copper, would inevitably discover and use gold.
On the other hand, a metalworking Thule culture, one that was making extensive use of copper, would inevitably discover and use gold.
Butterflies.
With a civilization this extensive in the North, colonization attempts will be far different, which will result in different people, different social and political pressures, and different technological focuses. The US isn't going to exist in TTL.
Maybe, maybe not. I think that almost inevitably we'll see English colonization of the Atlantic Seaboard, and a reasonable likelihood that the Seaboard colonies will revolt. If they do revolt, I suspect that their best chance would be to do it as a federation and in such a case, odds are the Federation will hang together and expand inland. So I think a United States somewhat along OTL lines, though likely with different people and possibly different borders, is likely.
There will be some interesting butterflies. Both the British and French in OTL were heavily invested in the Fur Trade. The French Fur Trade routes followed the mississippi basin out to Louisiana, and the St. Laurence into the Great Lakes. That's unlikely to interact with the Thule.
On the other hand, the great British Fur Trade route was through Hudson Bay - thus the Hudson Bay Company. Although the British Fur Trade was with the Cree of the Nelson and Churchill river basins, extending down to Lake Winnipeg and Red River and into the Prairies, they'd have to go past the Thule, who might be motivated to monopolize and control the fur trade.
Basically its unlikely that the Thule could challenge the British on the Sea. But they could drive down along the shores and turn the Bay into a Thule lake. It would be expensive and difficult, but if controlling the British Fur trade is lucrative enough it could be done.
There's prospects for running conflicts between the Thule and the British, or perhaps a situation like India, where the British and French fight it out arming Thule proxies.
One big advantage the Thule have is that they live in a fastness--a vast fastness as someone else pointed out below. They are by no means invulnerable in the Arctic; I think DValdron pointed out some weeks ago that hostile powers determined to wreak havoc on them will attack their fields (which take years to mature) and the earthworks that have accumulated over centuries that make those fields so much more productive than some random plot of unimproved tundra would be. When and where they are weak (say in the aftermath of some plague--and they won't be exposed to all Eurasian diseases all at once, some major ones might take centuries after the first exposures to work their way north; indeed the Eurasian complex including America was suffering from bouts of fairly new diseases in the 19th century, like cholera) they will be vulnerable and if they are bordering some power or people with a grudge, or facing some ambitious European colonial scheme, the Euros and/or Native allies might do a whole lot of very lasting damage.
Also, Europeans are going to be able to learn and to some extent master Thule methods of staying alive and functional in the Arctic.
However, I do think that unless they are broken down utterly, they will always have the advantage in the Arctic, provided they can absorb enough European tech to hold their own. I lean toward the idea they catch up to the extent Japan did, by the time Japan did anyway, but that's just a preference I have. Even if their society is never able to catch up to First World standards in terms of mass education, a fair amount of technology in routine and widespread use, and all that stuff, they can trade for guns and the like, assuming they face Europeans divided and at odds with each other.
So--as DValdron also pointed out, their earthworks are defensible. They have vast reaches of tundra and ice-bound islands to retreat over, to rally on. They can move in the Arctic much less clumsily than the Europeans can, they can probably survive in places the Europeans simply could not (without their help). So for them, the Arctic is a vast layered defense. They can survive even if they always remain rather backward; if they can avoid being too backward they can take their place eventually in the constellation of recognized nations to be reckoned with.
Again my Ice Arab concept; as the Arabs could move in deserts much more easily than their more developed opponents, they could move in and take some such settled lands (indeed Arab societies long before Mohammed were a spectrum from deep desert Bedouin to city dwellers, with individuals and families moving between these categories and them overlapping quite a lot) and form as it were a composite society partaking of the advantages of both. The Thule can move over the vastness of the Arctic, they can have villages where Europeans would simply die, let alone get any crops in, and big cities where Europeans would struggle to maintain a trading post. On their margins, they can in various ways dominate other peoples, not necessarily by terror, and incorporate them into their larger system.
My answer, which is obviously not DValdron's, comes down to one word that encompasses all the detailed advantages:
Capitalism.
Most of the advantages the Europeans incorporated were after all picked up from other people first. It was having a social/economic/political system that enabled competitive enterprise based on hiring labor that allowed all that to get synergistically welded together, and undergo continuous development that over time amounted to revolutions in basic production and gave them technology unlike anything found elsewhere, and to keep on feeding these advances into the basic economy so it exponentially produce still more of them.
Now I don't think capitalism was anything anyone particularly wanted; it didn't begin to become an ideology until the latter end of the timeframe you mentioned, the later part of the 19th century, and not a dominant ideology until the 20th. It was something that grew up behind people's backs, often despite deliberate efforts to check it. Gradually though, those societies that found ways to accommodate and incorporate entrepreneurs focused on profit advanced over those that were less supportive.
The Europeans were keen to point to any number of other reasons for their success--the favor of God; various political constitutions; eventually race; the first people to systematically consider how their economic system was their big advantage were also enemies of capitalism, in the sense that they hoped to see it dead--transcended, they hoped, by a still better and more effective economic organization that would more fully develop human potentials and avoid the prodigal waste inherent in capitalism. But they also recognized how the capitalist forms of organization, in production itself and associated political forms, were making the Europeans increasingly unstoppable elsewhere in the world.
I certainly think this is correct.
They wouldn't run into the Thule if they developed as OTL and they had no awareness of them. But here by the time New France is being founded, assuming it happens at a similar time and in a similar manner, everyone in Europe would be aware the Thule exist and have some notion of the manner in which they live and the range of their power. So the French might take it into their heads, once sufficiently established in Acadia and up the river, to mount an expedition northward, to contact the Thule--or it seems more likely to me, some subset of them, some nation if the Thule are politically fragmented, some cliques in some particular locations of the Thule realm if it is fairly united. They'd consider the Thule to be another powerful tribe with wide-ranging connections it is worthwhile to cultivate, as per their general pattern.
I even have this quaint notion of New France recruiting and arming a Thule legion, to be used against the English in the dead of North American winter, when conditions not entirely unlike the Arctic prevail across vast sweeps of the continent--including New France, and overlapping considerably on British North America.
One way to butterfly away an independent union of former British colonies is to keep them afraid of New France, and have New France block their way westward.
Thule shock troops alone probably won't do it by themselves. But if they make NF look like a bigger deal in Paris, and push back the English somewhat more than OTL, then France might invest more across the board in NF, thus beefing up the Francophone core and widening their periphery of Native contacts.
I'd think the British would be prime candidates for the Thule's chief trade partners, were it not for DirtyCommie's first post of this thread, in which it was clear that many European powers were vying for Thule favor, and at the moment of this coronation the new Thule honcho had apparently declared war on the British.
So clearly they dropped the ball of achieving smooth contact.
The British Arctic is clearly not ruled out yet, but the OP made it clear that in this timeline, they are going to have to fight to have even a share of the interface with the Thule, and their total victory seems like a very remote and negligible possibility.
The European's killer app was capitalism in the form of usury and trade; supplemented in the 19th century by capitalism in the form of production.
Consider the situation of the Maori, where capitalist property was central. Consider also the systematic destabilisation of Chinese and Indian economies.
I'm imagining a post-colonial history "The Survival of the Thule Kingdom under British Protection: Nothing Worth Stealing, Not Even for Scotsmen"
yours,
Sam R.
The Big Shaggy - Domestication of the Musk Ox
Despite their name and appearance, Musk Ox are not actually oxen. They are most closely related to goats. Musk Ox range in size between 400 and 900 pounds. . Males reach sexual maturity at five years of age, while females reach sexual maturity at two. Mating season is August or September, during mating season bulls are very aggressive. Gestation period is 34 weeks with a single calf (occasionally twins), born in April or May. Juveniles will nurse for a year. Musk Ox cows can produce a calf a year, but in the wild generally reproduce every other year during their fertile period. Life span is 20 to 24 years.
Musk Ox are the other great dominant arctic herbivore, beside Caribou. The mystery is how these two great beasts manage to occupy what is essentially the same landscape. Arguably, there’s only one room for one animal in a niche. Musk Ox and Caribou must therefore manage to establish different strengths in the arctic landscape.
For Musk Ox, one key to their survival against their Caribou competitors seems to be their greater tolerance for cold. Caribou migrate, moving across their environment, occasionally travelling vast distances. Musk Ox, in comparison, park, sheltering under immense winter coats without moving too far in their range. They tend to occupy a specific territory and to move through it over the seasons, the herd has a detailed communal memory of water sources and forage areas in their area, and are able to exploit the sparse resources of the north better. Musk Ox seem to be better at digging through hard packed deep snow and ice for winter forage (although they seem to prefer highlands in winter because the snow cover is less), the literature indicates that in winter small herds will actually dig ‘craters’ into snow cover to get at underlying forage.
There is a downside to their heavy winter coats, Musk Ox seem vulnerable to rains which soak their fur and rob them of their warmth. Too much water causes the wool to clump, stealing heat. Although Musk Ox once ranged widely through the north from Greenland to Alaska and Siberia, it seems significant that in modern times, their core range seem to be the Canadian arctic archipelago, which experiences so little precipitation that the environment is almost a desert. It’s difficult to generalize, but my sense is that Musk Ox tend to dominate in dryer and highland territories, particularly the northern and eastern islands of the archipelago.
Musk Ox in OTL have been the subject of recent domestication efforts for wool, and there are some theories that following the last ice age, Musk Ox in Europe were an early domesticate, abandoned when the weather got too warm for them. While this is useful for demonstrating the potential of Musk Ox as a domesticate in our time line, it doesn’t offer too much in terms of the potential applications for the Thule.
There’s no literature at all on the Musk Ox as a draft animal, but we can make some inferences. Generally, Musk Ox are far less migratory than Caribou. When grazing, they may average about a mile a day. Their migratory pattern tends to be from lowlands during summer, to sparse highlands during winter. On the whole, this implies less speed and less endurance as a pack/draft animal.
On the other hand, their behavioural repertoir includes head butting, noted even in juvenile animals and in play behaviour, and mating contests will involve bulls charging at each other from a hundred yard distance at 35 miles an hour. They’ll also use their heads and horns to break through heavy snow cover for feeding, or defend against predators. The implication is that they’re probably far better as plow animals than as sled or pack animals, and probably pound for pound, a match for or superior to caribou as plow animals. And of course, each musk ox brings a lot more pounds to the table.
Beyond that, its likely possible to generalize their capacity from existing knowledge of draft animals. As a general rule, draft animals seem capable of carrying between 10 and 15 per cent of their body weight as a pack load for an extended period. Given a Musk Ox weight range from 400 to 900 pounds, this suggests that they’d manage between 40 and 135 lbs. Significantly inferior in comparison to both dogs and caribou.
On the other hand, the old world animal most similar to the Musk Ox in physiology and environment is probably the Tibetan Yak. Yak pack capacity is significant, between 25 and 30 per cent of body weight. If Musk Ox performance is similar, we’d see a pack capacity between 100 and 300 pounds.
Goats, who are biologically the closest relatives of Musk Ox are extremely different physiologically, but we might infer some similar capacity from genetic heritage. They seem to fall in between, with a pack capacity of between 12 per cent and 25 per cent. Goats are fairly gracile creatures, while Musk Ox go to bulk, so I’d think that they’d probably have a better pack capacity. So, arbitrarily, that would put them between 17 per cent and 30 per cent, which is same ball park as a yak. Better than horse and cattle. Still inferior to dogs and caribou but pretty close.
With much greater size and some regional advantage, Musk Ox are competitive. Terrain where Musk Ox hold competitive advantages is generally poorer, less supportive of agriculture, and lower yielding in the agriculture it supports.
Musk Ox holding their own as local pack and sleigh animals in their own areas, and perhaps as superior plow animals generally. Caribou are superior as long range pack and sled animals. Dogs would occupy a niche as specialty pack and sled animals, particularly along shorelines or out on ice.
Musk Ox domestication was both hindered and helped by Caribou domestication. Domesticating Caribou significantly improved overland mobility and carrying capacity of the Thule. This made it much easier to hunt and kill Musk Ox and transport their meat and hides. In many areas, Musk Ox were wild competitors to domesticated Caribou, and were hunted out or hunted to local extinction in part to provide more forage for larger Caribou populations, both wild and domesticated.
As wild meat, the economic cost of harvesting Musk Ox meat was much lower than for domesticated Caribou, which was a strong incentive to hunt. On the other side of the coin, there was very little reason to go through the significant initial effort of trying to domesticate or tame wild Musk Ox, when you already had a big domesticate who could do everything that the Musk Ox could do anyway. Basically, it simply made a lot more sense in most areas to kill Musk Ox, rather than to try and domesticate them.
Thus through large parts of the Thule range, there was little incentive or interest in domestication. Nevertheless, Musk Ox domestication did emerge approximately fifty to seventy-five years after Caribou domestication had become commonplace.
Domestication originated in the eastern portions of the Arctic Archipelago, most likely Banks or Victoria Islands, in regions where the Caribou were relatively scarce.
Banks and Victoria were relatively cool and arid, though not as arid as the Islands to the north of them. It was relatively unfavourable land for Caribou, and fairly unfavourable for agriculture, even the hardy Thule variety.
Still, like other regions, Banks and Victoria had seen the pre-agricultural practices that lead to sweetvetch, roseroot, claytonia and bistort being a part of the Thule diet. But given the conditions, it was a relatively smaller part. Still, this produced a larger population than simple hunter/gathering practices would have allowed.
The Agricultural revolution put substantial pressure on the Banks and Victoria Island populations. They tended to cling to hunter/gatherer lifestyles, but they found themselves under increasing pressure from immigrants from the mainland or Baffin Island who were expanding with their population. The original residents found themselves successively pushed to the margins by the Agricultural immigrants and their Caribou. But the immigrants found that their package wasn't working quite so well.
There was substantial rivalry and tension between the immigrants, with their malfunctioning Agricultural package and domesticate, but greater numbers, and the beleaguered hunter/gatherers who were being pushed out of their own territories. The result was a series of unorganized low level conflicts that came to be known as the 'Musk Ox wars' as two Thule subcultures fought for supremacy. This took the form of intermittent and opportunistic massacres by each side, of endemic murders and assaults, fierce territorial disputes, and indiscriminate slaughter by each side of the other's animals.
The hunter gatherers found that they could cripple Agriculture by destroying or despoiling the perrenial crops, and slaughtering domesticated caribou or dogs. This left starving immigrants competing for meat, pushing deep into hunter/gatherer territories unuseable for agriculture and slaughtering musk ox. Each side would plan and carry out ambushes whenever and wherever they could organize them. Actual conflicts and battles were rare.
The nominal victors were the hunter-gatherers but only at the cost of cultural transformation. Pushed to the margins, their food animals under threat, they were forced to actively domesticate the Musk Ox, and adapted themselves to a modified and attenuated horticultural package. Over time, this combination of musk ox/horticulture slowly outcompeted or merged with the more traditional Thule caribou/agriculture package.
The spreading agricultural culture, and the now widely known and understood example of Caribou domestication inspired efforts to employ the most common local animal for draft labour. Cultural transference was very direct, efforts to domesticate and harness Musk Ox borrowed from Caribou methods and tools, and only gradually diverged on their own.
Luckily, once widespread efforts began to emerge, the Musk Ox proved relatively easy to domesticate. In some ways, they were much easier, since they lacked the tendency to migrate or wander great distances, they did not flee when startled and they clustered easily.
The spread of Musk Ox domestication proceeded much more slowly than Caribou domestication, in part a victim of the success of Caribou stock which made it hard for Musk Ox to compete. Musk Ox draft and herding spread readily from Banks and Victoria, north through the archipelago. In these areas, increasing aridity and wind made it difficult for human agriculture to get a foothold, and an emerging herding/horticulture/hunter/gather subculture continued to displace traditional hunter gatherers.
In mainland areas, many indigenous Musk Ox populations had been hunted out, so there were fewer animals and relatively less incentive to domesticate. They spread extremely slowly, often as a novelty. They were most successful in the marginal agricultural areas where plow strength was valued, and gradually became relatively common there. They spread into intermediate agricultural zones as a minority draft animal.
The association of Musk Ox with more marginal territories helped to give the Musk Ox a reputation among the Thule as an inferior animal. There was some merit to this. Although adequate for a plow, they were poorer sled and pack animals. Although they could carry heavier loads because of their size, these loads were proportionately smaller than for Caribou. Their larger size meant fewer available animals to carry packs. Not great travellers, they carried packs or pulled sleds more slowly and lacked the range of dogs or caribou.
They were also considered to be poorer meat animals, producing significantly less meat for the size of the animal and less tasty meat, although this might come down to preference. Their hides were less desirable than Caribou.
Further, among the Thule, they earned a reputation as unpredictable and dangerous, requiring careful and experienced handling. They also fared poorly in the wetter and more rain prone areas of the Thule region.
Nevertheless, Musk Ox domestication caught on and spread, particularly in the poorer areas of the Thule range. It was a far better beast than its reputation. Their shed wool was not matched by Caribou and had unique value as padding or packing. Their milk came in similar volumes as Caribou milk, though higher in lactose and lower in fat, and was more easily harvested.
Their labour suffered only in comparison and was still substantial, and they remained competitive in meats and hide. The Musk Ox head butting contests became a major source of seasonal Thule sport and entertainment, and some herders would bring their animals great distances to fight each other.
Musk Ox Men became an independent and fiercely proud specialty, and pure Musk Ox country, cold, dry, arid and with restricted agriculture became significant subculture.
Despite their name and appearance, Musk Ox are not actually oxen. They are most closely related to goats. Musk Ox range in size between 400 and 900 pounds. . Males reach sexual maturity at five years of age, while females reach sexual maturity at two. Mating season is August or September, during mating season bulls are very aggressive. Gestation period is 34 weeks with a single calf (occasionally twins), born in April or May. Juveniles will nurse for a year. Musk Ox cows can produce a calf a year, but in the wild generally reproduce every other year during their fertile period. Life span is 20 to 24 years.
Musk Ox are the other great dominant arctic herbivore, beside Caribou. The mystery is how these two great beasts manage to occupy what is essentially the same landscape. Arguably, there’s only one room for one animal in a niche. Musk Ox and Caribou must therefore manage to establish different strengths in the arctic landscape.
For Musk Ox, one key to their survival against their Caribou competitors seems to be their greater tolerance for cold. Caribou migrate, moving across their environment, occasionally travelling vast distances. Musk Ox, in comparison, park, sheltering under immense winter coats without moving too far in their range. They tend to occupy a specific territory and to move through it over the seasons, the herd has a detailed communal memory of water sources and forage areas in their area, and are able to exploit the sparse resources of the north better. Musk Ox seem to be better at digging through hard packed deep snow and ice for winter forage (although they seem to prefer highlands in winter because the snow cover is less), the literature indicates that in winter small herds will actually dig ‘craters’ into snow cover to get at underlying forage.
There is a downside to their heavy winter coats, Musk Ox seem vulnerable to rains which soak their fur and rob them of their warmth. Too much water causes the wool to clump, stealing heat. Although Musk Ox once ranged widely through the north from Greenland to Alaska and Siberia, it seems significant that in modern times, their core range seem to be the Canadian arctic archipelago, which experiences so little precipitation that the environment is almost a desert. It’s difficult to generalize, but my sense is that Musk Ox tend to dominate in dryer and highland territories, particularly the northern and eastern islands of the archipelago.
Musk Ox in OTL have been the subject of recent domestication efforts for wool, and there are some theories that following the last ice age, Musk Ox in Europe were an early domesticate, abandoned when the weather got too warm for them. While this is useful for demonstrating the potential of Musk Ox as a domesticate in our time line, it doesn’t offer too much in terms of the potential applications for the Thule.
There’s no literature at all on the Musk Ox as a draft animal, but we can make some inferences. Generally, Musk Ox are far less migratory than Caribou. When grazing, they may average about a mile a day. Their migratory pattern tends to be from lowlands during summer, to sparse highlands during winter. On the whole, this implies less speed and less endurance as a pack/draft animal.
On the other hand, their behavioural repertoir includes head butting, noted even in juvenile animals and in play behaviour, and mating contests will involve bulls charging at each other from a hundred yard distance at 35 miles an hour. They’ll also use their heads and horns to break through heavy snow cover for feeding, or defend against predators. The implication is that they’re probably far better as plow animals than as sled or pack animals, and probably pound for pound, a match for or superior to caribou as plow animals. And of course, each musk ox brings a lot more pounds to the table.
Beyond that, its likely possible to generalize their capacity from existing knowledge of draft animals. As a general rule, draft animals seem capable of carrying between 10 and 15 per cent of their body weight as a pack load for an extended period. Given a Musk Ox weight range from 400 to 900 pounds, this suggests that they’d manage between 40 and 135 lbs. Significantly inferior in comparison to both dogs and caribou.
On the other hand, the old world animal most similar to the Musk Ox in physiology and environment is probably the Tibetan Yak. Yak pack capacity is significant, between 25 and 30 per cent of body weight. If Musk Ox performance is similar, we’d see a pack capacity between 100 and 300 pounds.
Goats, who are biologically the closest relatives of Musk Ox are extremely different physiologically, but we might infer some similar capacity from genetic heritage. They seem to fall in between, with a pack capacity of between 12 per cent and 25 per cent. Goats are fairly gracile creatures, while Musk Ox go to bulk, so I’d think that they’d probably have a better pack capacity. So, arbitrarily, that would put them between 17 per cent and 30 per cent, which is same ball park as a yak. Better than horse and cattle. Still inferior to dogs and caribou but pretty close.
With much greater size and some regional advantage, Musk Ox are competitive. Terrain where Musk Ox hold competitive advantages is generally poorer, less supportive of agriculture, and lower yielding in the agriculture it supports.
Musk Ox holding their own as local pack and sleigh animals in their own areas, and perhaps as superior plow animals generally. Caribou are superior as long range pack and sled animals. Dogs would occupy a niche as specialty pack and sled animals, particularly along shorelines or out on ice.
Musk Ox domestication was both hindered and helped by Caribou domestication. Domesticating Caribou significantly improved overland mobility and carrying capacity of the Thule. This made it much easier to hunt and kill Musk Ox and transport their meat and hides. In many areas, Musk Ox were wild competitors to domesticated Caribou, and were hunted out or hunted to local extinction in part to provide more forage for larger Caribou populations, both wild and domesticated.
As wild meat, the economic cost of harvesting Musk Ox meat was much lower than for domesticated Caribou, which was a strong incentive to hunt. On the other side of the coin, there was very little reason to go through the significant initial effort of trying to domesticate or tame wild Musk Ox, when you already had a big domesticate who could do everything that the Musk Ox could do anyway. Basically, it simply made a lot more sense in most areas to kill Musk Ox, rather than to try and domesticate them.
Thus through large parts of the Thule range, there was little incentive or interest in domestication. Nevertheless, Musk Ox domestication did emerge approximately fifty to seventy-five years after Caribou domestication had become commonplace.
Domestication originated in the eastern portions of the Arctic Archipelago, most likely Banks or Victoria Islands, in regions where the Caribou were relatively scarce.
Banks and Victoria were relatively cool and arid, though not as arid as the Islands to the north of them. It was relatively unfavourable land for Caribou, and fairly unfavourable for agriculture, even the hardy Thule variety.
Still, like other regions, Banks and Victoria had seen the pre-agricultural practices that lead to sweetvetch, roseroot, claytonia and bistort being a part of the Thule diet. But given the conditions, it was a relatively smaller part. Still, this produced a larger population than simple hunter/gathering practices would have allowed.
The Agricultural revolution put substantial pressure on the Banks and Victoria Island populations. They tended to cling to hunter/gatherer lifestyles, but they found themselves under increasing pressure from immigrants from the mainland or Baffin Island who were expanding with their population. The original residents found themselves successively pushed to the margins by the Agricultural immigrants and their Caribou. But the immigrants found that their package wasn't working quite so well.
There was substantial rivalry and tension between the immigrants, with their malfunctioning Agricultural package and domesticate, but greater numbers, and the beleaguered hunter/gatherers who were being pushed out of their own territories. The result was a series of unorganized low level conflicts that came to be known as the 'Musk Ox wars' as two Thule subcultures fought for supremacy. This took the form of intermittent and opportunistic massacres by each side, of endemic murders and assaults, fierce territorial disputes, and indiscriminate slaughter by each side of the other's animals.
The hunter gatherers found that they could cripple Agriculture by destroying or despoiling the perrenial crops, and slaughtering domesticated caribou or dogs. This left starving immigrants competing for meat, pushing deep into hunter/gatherer territories unuseable for agriculture and slaughtering musk ox. Each side would plan and carry out ambushes whenever and wherever they could organize them. Actual conflicts and battles were rare.
The nominal victors were the hunter-gatherers but only at the cost of cultural transformation. Pushed to the margins, their food animals under threat, they were forced to actively domesticate the Musk Ox, and adapted themselves to a modified and attenuated horticultural package. Over time, this combination of musk ox/horticulture slowly outcompeted or merged with the more traditional Thule caribou/agriculture package.
The spreading agricultural culture, and the now widely known and understood example of Caribou domestication inspired efforts to employ the most common local animal for draft labour. Cultural transference was very direct, efforts to domesticate and harness Musk Ox borrowed from Caribou methods and tools, and only gradually diverged on their own.
Luckily, once widespread efforts began to emerge, the Musk Ox proved relatively easy to domesticate. In some ways, they were much easier, since they lacked the tendency to migrate or wander great distances, they did not flee when startled and they clustered easily.
The spread of Musk Ox domestication proceeded much more slowly than Caribou domestication, in part a victim of the success of Caribou stock which made it hard for Musk Ox to compete. Musk Ox draft and herding spread readily from Banks and Victoria, north through the archipelago. In these areas, increasing aridity and wind made it difficult for human agriculture to get a foothold, and an emerging herding/horticulture/hunter/gather subculture continued to displace traditional hunter gatherers.
In mainland areas, many indigenous Musk Ox populations had been hunted out, so there were fewer animals and relatively less incentive to domesticate. They spread extremely slowly, often as a novelty. They were most successful in the marginal agricultural areas where plow strength was valued, and gradually became relatively common there. They spread into intermediate agricultural zones as a minority draft animal.
The association of Musk Ox with more marginal territories helped to give the Musk Ox a reputation among the Thule as an inferior animal. There was some merit to this. Although adequate for a plow, they were poorer sled and pack animals. Although they could carry heavier loads because of their size, these loads were proportionately smaller than for Caribou. Their larger size meant fewer available animals to carry packs. Not great travellers, they carried packs or pulled sleds more slowly and lacked the range of dogs or caribou.
They were also considered to be poorer meat animals, producing significantly less meat for the size of the animal and less tasty meat, although this might come down to preference. Their hides were less desirable than Caribou.
Further, among the Thule, they earned a reputation as unpredictable and dangerous, requiring careful and experienced handling. They also fared poorly in the wetter and more rain prone areas of the Thule region.
Nevertheless, Musk Ox domestication caught on and spread, particularly in the poorer areas of the Thule range. It was a far better beast than its reputation. Their shed wool was not matched by Caribou and had unique value as padding or packing. Their milk came in similar volumes as Caribou milk, though higher in lactose and lower in fat, and was more easily harvested.
Their labour suffered only in comparison and was still substantial, and they remained competitive in meats and hide. The Musk Ox head butting contests became a major source of seasonal Thule sport and entertainment, and some herders would bring their animals great distances to fight each other.
Musk Ox Men became an independent and fiercely proud specialty, and pure Musk Ox country, cold, dry, arid and with restricted agriculture became significant subculture.
The Sandman
Banned
Nope. I find it highly interesting; it lets me get a much better feel for how this culture came about and what it would have looked like.
Still wonder if moose are a potential domesticate at the southern end of the Thule range, though. Or bison, for that matter; wood bison apparently once existed throughout the southern parts of Thule territory. In both cases similarity with existing domesticates and their utility in climates where caribou and musk oxen perform poorly would to me indicate at least some possibility of its occurrence.
Arctic fox domestication might be a way to fill the "cat" niche, in the sense of a small predatory animal that eats agricultural pests. Depends on how quickly they can breed smaller dogs, I suppose.
I'm guessing that seals and maybe walruses are semi-domesticated; the Thule encourage suitable habitat for them along the shore and have general rules on how many can be harvested at a time, but actively domesticating an animal that spends that much time underwater is probably impossible.
And on the far-out crazy end of things, how much bear taming is there? I'm assuming domestication of any bear species is pretty much impossible, but I'd think that a group of tame polar bears or grizzlies would be a nice status symbol for the rulers of the eventual Thule kingdoms.
On the subject of metal, iron and bronze (especially bronze, I think, given the amount of water both frozen and liquid in the region) would be important for use in tools. Better arrowheads won't matter much, but better plows, picks, shovels and other tools to fell and carve trees, dig into the permafrost, shape earthworks and other such pursuits would be another major boost to Thule productivity. Dried caribou and musk ox dung would help explain how the Thule could avoid completely deforesting the region in search of firewood.
Bison domestication may be tough. There have been modern efforts at domesticating or farming bison and elk, but they're fairly difficult creatures, I've been given to understand.
Musk Ox domestication comes about in part because the 'technology' of domestication is established with Caribou, and in part because a subculture of Thule, the residue population of hunter/gatherers gets its back put up against a wall in a marginal region where the Agriculturalists can't really administer the knockout. This leaves the hunter/gatherers forced into making a cultural leap with the resources left available to them, Musk Ox.
You'll note that the more dominant developing Thule Agricultural complex, once they had Caribou, didn't actually need anything else. Musk Ox were simply free protein to them.
Bison and Moose would be free protein. Lots of incentive to hunt, possibly to hunt out. Not a lot of incentive to put the effort into domestication. There might be advantages to domesticating one or both of these animals, but I don't want to gild the lilly too much. Basically, I think you'd need something to happen to the local culture to get a further domestication event. Some situation that changes the economics of free protein.
Musk Ox domestication comes about in part because the 'technology' of domestication is established with Caribou, and in part because a subculture of Thule, the residue population of hunter/gatherers gets its back put up against a wall in a marginal region where the Agriculturalists can't really administer the knockout. This leaves the hunter/gatherers forced into making a cultural leap with the resources left available to them, Musk Ox.
You'll note that the more dominant developing Thule Agricultural complex, once they had Caribou, didn't actually need anything else. Musk Ox were simply free protein to them.
Bison and Moose would be free protein. Lots of incentive to hunt, possibly to hunt out. Not a lot of incentive to put the effort into domestication. There might be advantages to domesticating one or both of these animals, but I don't want to gild the lilly too much. Basically, I think you'd need something to happen to the local culture to get a further domestication event. Some situation that changes the economics of free protein.
The Sandman
Banned
The incentive to domesticate bison/moose would be at the point where the outermost edges of the caribou/musk ox range intersect some part of the bison/moose range. Basically, Thule herders moving into those areas find that their animals are faring poorly, take a look at the similar-seeming animals in their new environment, and see about raising them as an alternative.
The other option I can think of would be non-Thule societies in close enough contact with the Thule to get an idea of how useful large domesticates can be trying to create their own to compensate. Moose might be more likely here, since there would be a military incentive to have a riding animal of your own in the woodlands at the edge of Thule territory once the Thule start using caribou in similar fashion.
On a completely different topic, the Thule might get hit with the European epidemic wave at about the same time as the rest of North America, assuming they haven't been exposed to the European disease package by contact with the Norse (which would have major effects of its own, assuming that the diseases spread into the Amerindian trade network several centuries ahead of schedule). Given the network of waterways available to them, I'd assume that Thule traders would probably reach Lake Superior or at least Lake Winnipeg, which then (through intermediaries) would put them in contact with points further south.
The other option I can think of would be non-Thule societies in close enough contact with the Thule to get an idea of how useful large domesticates can be trying to create their own to compensate. Moose might be more likely here, since there would be a military incentive to have a riding animal of your own in the woodlands at the edge of Thule territory once the Thule start using caribou in similar fashion.
On a completely different topic, the Thule might get hit with the European epidemic wave at about the same time as the rest of North America, assuming they haven't been exposed to the European disease package by contact with the Norse (which would have major effects of its own, assuming that the diseases spread into the Amerindian trade network several centuries ahead of schedule). Given the network of waterways available to them, I'd assume that Thule traders would probably reach Lake Superior or at least Lake Winnipeg, which then (through intermediaries) would put them in contact with points further south.
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