Please take this forward! I think it's very interesting and the counterpoint to Ice & Mice is a real treat.
I vaguely remember a conlang proposal years back (on the Zompist forums) for the language of the Inuits who settled the Svalbard Archipelago... or it may have been Dorset or Thule culture, come to think of it; the settlement was pretty early. It was competing with another conlanger's design for a Finnic language spoken by Saami who had made it there first...
Either scenario was pretty charming.
Regarding Yupik colonization of Siberia, it does seem to have been relatively late, and quite limited. I don't recall reading any arguments for more extensive settlement by Eskimoan cultures than was found on the ground by the early Russian explorers. (With disease in the 19th century and village centralization in the 20th, the later range was much contracted, of course).
I may be starting to sound shrill, but I'll repeat what I said on Ice & Mice: I strongly believe *Eskimoan cultural contact with Mesoamerica is considerably more plausible than with the Sinosphere. (Which is to say, still not very, without a lot of special arrangements.)
-- Kim
I vaguely remember a conlang proposal years back (on the Zompist forums) for the language of the Inuits who settled the Svalbard Archipelago... or it may have been Dorset or Thule culture, come to think of it; the settlement was pretty early. It was competing with another conlanger's design for a Finnic language spoken by Saami who had made it there first...
Regarding Yupik colonization of Siberia, it does seem to have been relatively late, and quite limited. I don't recall reading any arguments for more extensive settlement by Eskimoan cultures than was found on the ground by the early Russian explorers. (With disease in the 19th century and village centralization in the 20th, the later range was much contracted, of course).
I may be starting to sound shrill, but I'll repeat what I said on Ice & Mice: I strongly believe *Eskimoan cultural contact with Mesoamerica is considerably more plausible than with the Sinosphere. (Which is to say, still not very, without a lot of special arrangements.)
-- Kim