Plausibility Check: Californian Dorsets

The Dorset Culture was PaleoEskimo, and gave rise to Modern Inupiats. They encountered the Vikings on more then one occaision, as well as Modern Inupiats.
In OTL they spread East from Alaska to the Hudson bay.

If they perhaps moved west, would they be able to survive in Siberia, or (moving South) British Columbia, or California (yummy sealions)?

How likely is this scenario?

If it is not Likely, where Might a surviving Dorest Culture Live? Hokkaido? Siberia?
 
Wasn't Dorset culture eventually wiped out by Inuit culture that slowly took all the lands Dorset used to live on? I suppose the Norse in Greenland didn't help that much either, but then Greenland wasn't AFAIK their main area anyway.
 
Wasn't Dorset culture eventually wiped out by Inuit culture that slowly took all the lands Dorset used to live on? I suppose the Norse in Greenland didn't help that much either, but then Greenland wasn't AFAIK their main area anyway.

Yes, yes they were.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Wasn't Dorset culture eventually wiped out by Inuit culture that slowly took all the lands Dorset used to live on? I suppose the Norse in Greenland didn't help that much either, but then Greenland wasn't AFAIK their main area anyway.

IIRC Dorset was either a phase or a sub-group of Inuit anyway.
Californian Dorset would be rather different to be honest, it would also be in a good position to become something closer to great basin civilizations than the chumash IOTL. Or it might become the eskimo-aleut parallel to the Navajo.
 
Yes, yes they were.

Heh. So much for white man taking all the land, I suppose. ;)

So in order for this to work Dorset culture would have to have a fast incentive to move, and thus go south in desperation. They'd have to adopt to a new way of life in the warmer climates, and they'd have to have the capability to displace the existing people already living there...

I don't know. It sounds quite unlikely. Not impossible, mind you. But unlikely. The fact that we don't know much about Dorset culture in general only makes all the questions that arise that much harder to answer as well.
 
Heh. So much for white man taking all the land, I suppose. ;)

So in order for this to work Dorset culture would have to have a fast incentive to move, and thus go south in desperation. They'd have to adopt to a new way of life in the warmer climates, and they'd have to have the capability to displace the existing people already living there...

I don't know. It sounds quite unlikely. Not impossible, mind you. But unlikely. The fact that we don't know much about Dorset culture in general only makes all the questions that arise that much harder to answer as well.

What about Siberian Dorsets?
 
What about Siberian Dorsets?

There's a very good reason humans didn't cross the Bering strait ever between the time it was frozen and the 19th century. In short it's more or less impossible for Dorset culture to go that way.

They could perhaps move into the Aleutian islands, though.
 
If you look at a map of the Western U.S. and Canada there is an inland sea heading north from Washington. (Puget Sound,Salish Sea) If a truely seafaring Native American culture had emerged in this region there was nothing to stop them from dominating the West Coast. Your mention of the Norse is also apt, if they were spotted coming in they there to trade. If they could sneak in they were a raiding party. They might not be the Dorsets but they would be a interesting people.
 
If you look at a map of the Western U.S. and Canada there is an inland sea heading north from Washington. (Puget Sound,Salish Sea) If a truely seafaring Native American culture had emerged in this region there was nothing to stop them from dominating the West Coast. Your mention of the Norse is also apt, if they were spotted coming in they there to trade. If they could sneak in they were a raiding party. They might not be the Dorsets but they would be a interesting people.

Thank You.
Do you think the Makah could be such a culture?
 
If you look at a map of the Western U.S. and Canada there is an inland sea heading north from Washington. (Puget Sound,Salish Sea) If a truely seafaring Native American culture had emerged in this region there was nothing to stop them from dominating the West Coast. Your mention of the Norse is also apt, if they were spotted coming in they there to trade. If they could sneak in they were a raiding party. They might not be the Dorsets but they would be a interesting people.

I disagree. There was this native culture/tribe. I can't remember their names just right now, but they live in modern British Columbia and on Victoria Island. They are sometimes known as the Vikings of America, because they were a fierce warrior tribe that were great mariners and sailors. And even with all that they didn't get much farther than their own small isolated areas, despite occasionally doing raids on other tribes in the area.

If I was to speculate I would say that it's simply a difference of resources and tech capability coming from that. The Vikings lived in Scandinavia, which despite reputation is actually very fertile and quite warm, at least half of the year. Scandinavia is also ridiculously saturated with an abundance of different metals and fuels of all conceivable kinds. Hell, we even have oil. North-West America on the other hand simply does not.
 
Notice I said truly seafaring. I am aware of Native American tribes on the Washington and Canadian coast and the dust ups over whaling every few years. Yet they never really left the inland waterways. The pressures and cultural changes that sent the Norse south to Europe and east into the Atlantic never happened in the the Pacific North-West.
 
I disagree. There was this native culture/tribe. I can't remember their names just right now, but they live in modern British Columbia and on Victoria Island. They are sometimes known as the Vikings of America, because they were a fierce warrior tribe that were great mariners and sailors. And even with all that they didn't get much farther than their own small isolated areas, despite occasionally doing raids on other tribes in the area.

That tribe you're talking about is Haida.
 
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