WI: Inuit's in Northern Canada developed Pyrcrete in the 1200's?
- Thread starter omnimercurial
- Start date
Thought: if you couple this with a sub-artic agricultural package, would larger buildings be a more efficient way of housing concentrated population if you had whole septs or subclans inside each one? Depending on the design of the building and how you housed the people within it, of course.
....Would be terribly upset if I used the ideas thrown out here to pull a Jared? With plenty of my own ideas added, of course.
Now that...Is an Awesome title! 
Kudos to you DValdron! Your data on Arctic/Sub Arctic Animals & Plants, With ways they could be used with Pykrete to influence development of A bigger more developed Iniut culture & higher population is great. Its got all the workings & spark present for what could be A very believable/viable Alt Time Line/Story. Now all we need is someone willing to take it on. ^_^
Kudos to you DValdron! Your data on Arctic/Sub Arctic Animals & Plants, With ways they could be used with Pykrete to influence development of A bigger more developed Iniut culture & higher population is great. Its got all the workings & spark present for what could be A very believable/viable Alt Time Line/Story. Now all we need is someone willing to take it on. ^_^I think DirtyCommie has just volunteered.
I for one, am doing handsprings for joy. The only thing better than doing it myself is having someone else do it.
I'd love to just sit back and read, and maybe contribute ideas and suggestions as it goes along.
Maybe we could make it a kind of open ended discussion/development.
And definitely, I think make it a tribute to Jared.
I for one, am doing handsprings for joy. The only thing better than doing it myself is having someone else do it.
I'd love to just sit back and read, and maybe contribute ideas and suggestions as it goes along.
Maybe we could make it a kind of open ended discussion/development.
And definitely, I think make it a tribute to Jared.
A link to Cloudberries in Norway.
http://mylittlenorway.com/2011/07/guide-to-cloudberries/
Relevant information - slow growers, takes up to seven years to begin fruiting. One berry to a plant. They don't produce fruit every season, seems to depend on pollination. Cloudberry plants take up space, runners can go four meters, and the root system can go two meters deep. It's not clear how close the plants can be packed, but there are entire meadows of them in suitable terrain. The berry is very delicate, and can be crushed easily. It's usually made into a jam. Difficult and twitchy to cultivate. Efforts made to domesticate, but so far unsuccessful.
http://mylittlenorway.com/2011/07/guide-to-cloudberries/
Relevant information - slow growers, takes up to seven years to begin fruiting. One berry to a plant. They don't produce fruit every season, seems to depend on pollination. Cloudberry plants take up space, runners can go four meters, and the root system can go two meters deep. It's not clear how close the plants can be packed, but there are entire meadows of them in suitable terrain. The berry is very delicate, and can be crushed easily. It's usually made into a jam. Difficult and twitchy to cultivate. Efforts made to domesticate, but so far unsuccessful.
Lingonberries. Known by various names. Another arctic or subarctic berry, more amenable to cultivation than the cloudberry it seems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinium_vitis-idaea
http://www.canadiangardening.com/ga...ble-gardening/lure-of-the-lingonberry/a/24714
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinium_vitis-idaea
http://www.canadiangardening.com/ga...ble-gardening/lure-of-the-lingonberry/a/24714
Well, of course I hope to have you highly involved in the development process. It'll have to wait a bit though until HP repairs my computer. (had a meltdown, writing this from phone atm)
Go for it DirtyCommie! Im looking forward to seeing what you do with this concept. ^_^
Im looking forward to seeing what you do with this concept. ^_^Just a few thoughts on the Land of Mice and Snow
* The modern inuit and eskimo derive from the Thule culture, which around 900-1100 began to expand out of Alaska and displaced the preceding Dorset culture. The expansion was rapid, and by about 1300, the Thule Inuit extended as far as Northern Quebec and Labrador and Greenland in the east and out to Siberia in the West. So this was a rapidly expanding, fairly dynamic culture.
* The Thule/Inuit were able to displace their rivals because they were a literally more technologically sophisticated culture with a greater range of technology. In particular, they had domesticated dogs, which allowed them significant overland mobility, they had drills, bows and arrows, and a range of items. It seems strange to describe a hunter/gatherer subsistence culture as sophisticated. But this is what they were. They were a people who endured in the most hostile landscape on Earth, and did it successfully. The vikings who colonized Greenland were not so successful.
* So, we should probably recognize that even in OTL, the Inuit were an intellectually and technologically adaptive and sophisticated culture which was extremely successful, and even in modern times, coped fairly well with European influence, readily adapting and incorporating techniques and technology.
* The nature of the Inuit landscape, however, meant that there was not a lot of edible plants, particularly in comparison with the south. The Inuit culture oriented towards hunting and fishing, a lot of protein in the diet, and commensurate mobility. Through the course of a year, the Inuit populations moved steadily through their territories, sometimes gathering together, but invariably moving towards the hunting opportunities. The largest communities were a dozen houses and fifty people. Mostly, social units were much smaller. Even there, life was sometimes unreliable, bad hunting season was fatal, and there are archeological sites which are essentially inuit communities that starved to death. Basically, this meant that the population density with the current package was about as high as it could go.
* The Arctic/Subarctic climate has real obstacles to an agricultural package. We're talking a very short growing season, and relatively low temperatures. Summer has the benefit of extended periods of sunlight, often over 18 hours a day, but cloud cover reflects a lot of that. So basically, too harsh an environment for trees, a lot of muskeg, small plants, bushes and shrubs, etc., not too much that's both easily procurable and edible in comparison with the south. Due to the conditions, a lot of the plants are perrenials, living several years, and thus amortizing their biological investment for intermittent periods of biological investment.
* If we check, a lot of the edibles - Eskimo potato, Cloudberries, Cranberries, Crowberries and Linganberries are all perrenials. These are long lived plants which take a few years to produce their edible fruit or root, and are not necessarily reliable for producing annually. Obviously, this poses an obstacle to agriculture, no farmer wants to wait two or three years for his crop to come in, that's a good way to starve in the first year.
* Of course, if we poke around down south, there are a number of cultures which have perrenial producers as part of their package, or even as a staple. Grape growers in the mediterranean, or coca growers in south America are two examples. In these and similar cases, their food plants are treated as long term investments and a fair bit of attention is paid. So, its not out of the question.
* The bigger question is productivity. Suppose that we're intensively cultivating Lingonberries or cranberries. These are domesticated species that are commercially cultivated. What's the productive capacity per acre? Basically, how many people can you feed per acre, or how many acres do you need to feed a person? Given that this is terra incognita - ie, we're looking at complete hypotheticals, we'd have to look at the known qualities of the plants in question and make guesstimates.
* One thing to keep in mind with guesstimating is that domesticated plants tend to be a lot more productive than their wild counterparts. They're usually bred to grow faster, produce more berries or a bigger root or roots, maximizing biological potentials. Of course, with the Thule/Inuit, we'd only have a relatively short period of domestication, from about 900, so intensive breeding doesn't have a long time to work with. We're also looking at perrenials, so assuming a median 3 to 4 year cycle, we're only looking at about 200 to 300 plant generations before we get to the modern era. Given the time frames, you'd probably have to establish a productive domesticate within the first handful of generations. Still, there are potentials.
* One thing that kind of works in our favour is that that the Eskimo/Inuit actually do have proto-agricultural practices with regard to a couple of items. With Eskimo Potato, there is in some places a tradition of re-burying the thickest part of the root to encourage the plant to grow again. With mousefood, there's a tradition of leaving a gift or replacing the cache taken with 'vole edible' food so as to preserve the animal to continue its caching.
Interestingly, both of these practices seem to be from Alaska, which is where the Inuit/Thule originate. Alaska's a big place, but it seems possible that these practices could have emerged early and found their way to the component of the Inuit/Thule which expanded, and remained as part of the social toolkit when they spread across the north. Now, if these practices were very widespread and/or if you had roots or voles which responded extremely well to these practices, you'd probably have much more widespread plants and these plants or practices forming a larger part of the diet. Actually, the two feed into each other, if the plant responds very well to it, its more likely that the cultural practice becomes widespread, because it pays off.
* Let's stick with Eskimo potato for a second. As noted, this seems to be a pioneer plant, its tough and hardy, and it does well in disturbed ground. Assuming that it responded well to this sort of replanting of pieces of root, its a very short step to planting in new ground, or multi-planting to encourage multiple roots. In short, you'd see the next step in proto-agriculture where the inuit were actively and deliberately spreading the plant, and had a good grasp of the locations and grounds where the plant would grow well. It would be a long term investment, they'd do the planting, and then have to come back in a year or a few years. But it could pay off. Eventually, the annual migratory cycle would contain a series of garden patches that they'd travel through and harvest. A small bit of selective breeding or a minor mutation might vastly improve its cultivation qualities.
* There seem to be two species which go by the description Eskimo Potato. Claytonia Tuberosa, and Hedysarum Alpinum. Or it may be the same plant with two different scientific names as a result of some classification argument.
* Assuming that they're different, here's some interesting links of Claytonia:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5393267_edible-plants-flowers-arctic.html
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CLTUT
http://www.naturalmedicinalherbs.net/herbs/c/claytonia-tuberosa=tuberous-spring-beauty.php
* And here's links of Hedysarum, which is also known as Alpine Sweetvetch, and definitely seems to be a different plant, or at least have different flowers, and much more widely distributed. This is in addition to my previous link, which seems to suggest that Alpine Sweetvetch/Eskimo Potato is a very good candidate for domestication and possibly a founder or pseudo-founder co-founder crop:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=HEAL
http://arcticrose.wordpress.com/200...dian-potato-traditional-medicine-or-food-use/
http://www.mun.ca/biology/delta/arcticf/_ca/www/faheal.htm
http://www.tifilms.com/wild/call_debunked.htm
*You'll note that my Claytonia link contained 'edible plants and flowers of the arctic.' One of these is a shrub called Arctic Willow. Doesn't seem like much of a crop plant, but somewhat edible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_arctica
*A much more interesting plant is another edible root called Rhodiola Rosea. It's leaves are edible, and it appears to have mild mind altering properties, alleviating fatigue, depression, improving mood. Efforts are under way to develop it as a cultivated crop, largely because of its medicinal properties which give it significant value. My impression is that it's probably a more finicky plant that Alpine Sweetvetch. Might have some mileage as a secondary food crop, or a specialty medicinal crop - a la tobacco. Could be a major trading crop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodiola_rosea
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex13054
* On the subject of Reindeer and Caribou. There's too much Jared Diamond worship and not enough thinking things through. You look at the history of Reindeer domestication, or semi-domestication, and the interesting thing is that it's relatively recent. Goes back maybe 500 years and change. Prior to that, the Sammi people, or Lapplanders were hunters, following the herds. The shift seems to come when the expanding Norwegians intruded into Lapp territory, confining the Sammi. At which point, they seemed to make the switch from simple hunters to herders, and began to domesticate. That never happened at all with the inuit, whose
lifestyle was essentially incompatible. But change the equations of the inuit, say, a slightly greater population density, and less mobility, and you might get similar domestication efforts.
* I think in terms of the likelihood of domesticating animals, we should keep in mind that the Thule/Inuit were a culture which had mastered the domestication of the dog and the application of the dog as a work animal to a higher level than just about any other culture. Now, we tend to take dogs for granted. But let's get some perspective here - Fido is a large dangerous predator which coordinates its activities socially and is perfectly willing to eat people. Up in Northern Canada, every other year, there's an uproar about community dogs banding together and killing and eating a child. Dogs are very complementary to and work well within the thule/inuit lifestyle, and its a lifestyle which produces a surplus of meat or fish product to keep dogs going. But the point is that the Thule/Inuit, if they were domesticating and using dogs, had already made the conceptual leap to domesticated animals and animal labour. Now, in OTL culture, no other animal really fit in with the inuit lifestyle as a domestic. But if Inuit culture shifts then you might find other domestication possibilities being open and being explored. In some ways, a Caribou is a superior domesticate to a dog. Caribou aren't likely to eat you, and don't have that expensive meat/fish product diet.
* The modern inuit and eskimo derive from the Thule culture, which around 900-1100 began to expand out of Alaska and displaced the preceding Dorset culture. The expansion was rapid, and by about 1300, the Thule Inuit extended as far as Northern Quebec and Labrador and Greenland in the east and out to Siberia in the West. So this was a rapidly expanding, fairly dynamic culture.
* The Thule/Inuit were able to displace their rivals because they were a literally more technologically sophisticated culture with a greater range of technology. In particular, they had domesticated dogs, which allowed them significant overland mobility, they had drills, bows and arrows, and a range of items. It seems strange to describe a hunter/gatherer subsistence culture as sophisticated. But this is what they were. They were a people who endured in the most hostile landscape on Earth, and did it successfully. The vikings who colonized Greenland were not so successful.
* So, we should probably recognize that even in OTL, the Inuit were an intellectually and technologically adaptive and sophisticated culture which was extremely successful, and even in modern times, coped fairly well with European influence, readily adapting and incorporating techniques and technology.
* The nature of the Inuit landscape, however, meant that there was not a lot of edible plants, particularly in comparison with the south. The Inuit culture oriented towards hunting and fishing, a lot of protein in the diet, and commensurate mobility. Through the course of a year, the Inuit populations moved steadily through their territories, sometimes gathering together, but invariably moving towards the hunting opportunities. The largest communities were a dozen houses and fifty people. Mostly, social units were much smaller. Even there, life was sometimes unreliable, bad hunting season was fatal, and there are archeological sites which are essentially inuit communities that starved to death. Basically, this meant that the population density with the current package was about as high as it could go.
* The Arctic/Subarctic climate has real obstacles to an agricultural package. We're talking a very short growing season, and relatively low temperatures. Summer has the benefit of extended periods of sunlight, often over 18 hours a day, but cloud cover reflects a lot of that. So basically, too harsh an environment for trees, a lot of muskeg, small plants, bushes and shrubs, etc., not too much that's both easily procurable and edible in comparison with the south. Due to the conditions, a lot of the plants are perrenials, living several years, and thus amortizing their biological investment for intermittent periods of biological investment.
* If we check, a lot of the edibles - Eskimo potato, Cloudberries, Cranberries, Crowberries and Linganberries are all perrenials. These are long lived plants which take a few years to produce their edible fruit or root, and are not necessarily reliable for producing annually. Obviously, this poses an obstacle to agriculture, no farmer wants to wait two or three years for his crop to come in, that's a good way to starve in the first year.
* Of course, if we poke around down south, there are a number of cultures which have perrenial producers as part of their package, or even as a staple. Grape growers in the mediterranean, or coca growers in south America are two examples. In these and similar cases, their food plants are treated as long term investments and a fair bit of attention is paid. So, its not out of the question.
* The bigger question is productivity. Suppose that we're intensively cultivating Lingonberries or cranberries. These are domesticated species that are commercially cultivated. What's the productive capacity per acre? Basically, how many people can you feed per acre, or how many acres do you need to feed a person? Given that this is terra incognita - ie, we're looking at complete hypotheticals, we'd have to look at the known qualities of the plants in question and make guesstimates.
* One thing to keep in mind with guesstimating is that domesticated plants tend to be a lot more productive than their wild counterparts. They're usually bred to grow faster, produce more berries or a bigger root or roots, maximizing biological potentials. Of course, with the Thule/Inuit, we'd only have a relatively short period of domestication, from about 900, so intensive breeding doesn't have a long time to work with. We're also looking at perrenials, so assuming a median 3 to 4 year cycle, we're only looking at about 200 to 300 plant generations before we get to the modern era. Given the time frames, you'd probably have to establish a productive domesticate within the first handful of generations. Still, there are potentials.
* One thing that kind of works in our favour is that that the Eskimo/Inuit actually do have proto-agricultural practices with regard to a couple of items. With Eskimo Potato, there is in some places a tradition of re-burying the thickest part of the root to encourage the plant to grow again. With mousefood, there's a tradition of leaving a gift or replacing the cache taken with 'vole edible' food so as to preserve the animal to continue its caching.
Interestingly, both of these practices seem to be from Alaska, which is where the Inuit/Thule originate. Alaska's a big place, but it seems possible that these practices could have emerged early and found their way to the component of the Inuit/Thule which expanded, and remained as part of the social toolkit when they spread across the north. Now, if these practices were very widespread and/or if you had roots or voles which responded extremely well to these practices, you'd probably have much more widespread plants and these plants or practices forming a larger part of the diet. Actually, the two feed into each other, if the plant responds very well to it, its more likely that the cultural practice becomes widespread, because it pays off.
* Let's stick with Eskimo potato for a second. As noted, this seems to be a pioneer plant, its tough and hardy, and it does well in disturbed ground. Assuming that it responded well to this sort of replanting of pieces of root, its a very short step to planting in new ground, or multi-planting to encourage multiple roots. In short, you'd see the next step in proto-agriculture where the inuit were actively and deliberately spreading the plant, and had a good grasp of the locations and grounds where the plant would grow well. It would be a long term investment, they'd do the planting, and then have to come back in a year or a few years. But it could pay off. Eventually, the annual migratory cycle would contain a series of garden patches that they'd travel through and harvest. A small bit of selective breeding or a minor mutation might vastly improve its cultivation qualities.
* There seem to be two species which go by the description Eskimo Potato. Claytonia Tuberosa, and Hedysarum Alpinum. Or it may be the same plant with two different scientific names as a result of some classification argument.
* Assuming that they're different, here's some interesting links of Claytonia:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5393267_edible-plants-flowers-arctic.html
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CLTUT
http://www.naturalmedicinalherbs.net/herbs/c/claytonia-tuberosa=tuberous-spring-beauty.php
* And here's links of Hedysarum, which is also known as Alpine Sweetvetch, and definitely seems to be a different plant, or at least have different flowers, and much more widely distributed. This is in addition to my previous link, which seems to suggest that Alpine Sweetvetch/Eskimo Potato is a very good candidate for domestication and possibly a founder or pseudo-founder co-founder crop:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=HEAL
http://arcticrose.wordpress.com/200...dian-potato-traditional-medicine-or-food-use/
http://www.mun.ca/biology/delta/arcticf/_ca/www/faheal.htm
http://www.tifilms.com/wild/call_debunked.htm
*You'll note that my Claytonia link contained 'edible plants and flowers of the arctic.' One of these is a shrub called Arctic Willow. Doesn't seem like much of a crop plant, but somewhat edible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_arctica
*A much more interesting plant is another edible root called Rhodiola Rosea. It's leaves are edible, and it appears to have mild mind altering properties, alleviating fatigue, depression, improving mood. Efforts are under way to develop it as a cultivated crop, largely because of its medicinal properties which give it significant value. My impression is that it's probably a more finicky plant that Alpine Sweetvetch. Might have some mileage as a secondary food crop, or a specialty medicinal crop - a la tobacco. Could be a major trading crop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodiola_rosea
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex13054
* On the subject of Reindeer and Caribou. There's too much Jared Diamond worship and not enough thinking things through. You look at the history of Reindeer domestication, or semi-domestication, and the interesting thing is that it's relatively recent. Goes back maybe 500 years and change. Prior to that, the Sammi people, or Lapplanders were hunters, following the herds. The shift seems to come when the expanding Norwegians intruded into Lapp territory, confining the Sammi. At which point, they seemed to make the switch from simple hunters to herders, and began to domesticate. That never happened at all with the inuit, whose
lifestyle was essentially incompatible. But change the equations of the inuit, say, a slightly greater population density, and less mobility, and you might get similar domestication efforts.
* I think in terms of the likelihood of domesticating animals, we should keep in mind that the Thule/Inuit were a culture which had mastered the domestication of the dog and the application of the dog as a work animal to a higher level than just about any other culture. Now, we tend to take dogs for granted. But let's get some perspective here - Fido is a large dangerous predator which coordinates its activities socially and is perfectly willing to eat people. Up in Northern Canada, every other year, there's an uproar about community dogs banding together and killing and eating a child. Dogs are very complementary to and work well within the thule/inuit lifestyle, and its a lifestyle which produces a surplus of meat or fish product to keep dogs going. But the point is that the Thule/Inuit, if they were domesticating and using dogs, had already made the conceptual leap to domesticated animals and animal labour. Now, in OTL culture, no other animal really fit in with the inuit lifestyle as a domestic. But if Inuit culture shifts then you might find other domestication possibilities being open and being explored. In some ways, a Caribou is a superior domesticate to a dog. Caribou aren't likely to eat you, and don't have that expensive meat/fish product diet.
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Population and Subsistence Economics
Okay, now, in terms of the Thule/Inuit, here's the thing about the hunter/gatherer subsistence lifestyle: Without the ability to store quantities of food, even temporarily, your population is determined by the season of highest scarcity.
Let's take the following hypothetical. If you actually look hard enough, you can find academic studies which give you actual detail as to the traditional diets of aboriginals around the year, and relative productivity. But for this example, I'm making it up.
* Spring - diet - Caribou on migration. Supports 20
* Summer - Rabbits, fox, ptarmigan, small game, fishing. Edible roots and berries. Supports 30
* Fall - Dwindling small game, dwindling fish, berryseason is over, edible roots available. Supports 10
* Winter - Ice fishing, seals, walrus. Supports 25
Now, what's our inuit population year round? 10. Notwithstanding that other seasons support a larger population, the scarcest season can only support 10. You can't store or transfer surplus from other seasons, so in the fall season, there's only enough to feed 10. More than that, you've got starvation.
Since you can't store a surplus from the other seasons, that surplus goes uneaten.
Now, a couple of observations, actually, aboriginals or inuit did have some food storage techniques. Drying or smoking, or hammering meat into a paste, drying it out, and then saturating it with berry juice, called Pemmican. But it was small scale and labour intensive. So not a lot of long term or seasonal storage which would significantly affect population.
Second, when you're in that subsistence mode, and trapped by the season of scarcity, the only thing that you can do to avoid starvation is to move, expand your territory, or move into new territories. This makes your culture highly mobile. This is why the Thule/Inuit spread so rapidly from their Alaskan homeland into Siberia, across the Canadian North and into Greenland within the space of a century or so. They were expanding and moving fast and visibly displacing or overwhelming the previous culture.
So Pycrete as a small or large material for constructing summer season cold storage or freezers could be extremely significant in creating a larger population, because it allows seasonal surpluses to be amortized through the whole year. If you can transfer surpluses from other seasons, then potentially, in our example, your sustainable population goes from 10 to 20 or 25.
But it also inhibits mobility. A Pycrete oriented Inuit society makes more use of resources, sustains a larger population, but doesn't have to travel as far. So with Pycrete, the Inuit expansion and displacement of the Dorset culture might be a lot slower and take a lot longer. Of course, that itself might make an interesting butterly. But maybe not necessarily the one we want.
So, probably what you want is Pycrete emerging relatively late in the expansion, or after the expansion. Instead of around or before 900, then you're looking at 1000 or 1100.
If could happen at any time later of course. But my impression is that once cultures reach their maximum resource usage, they start to get conservative. Once you've covered your maximum territory, utilized all the recognized foodstuffs and maxed your population, trial and error gets dangerous. Basically, trial and error has a failure rate, and when you're at max, failure is devastating, best to stick with the tried and true. Innovation proceeds much more slowly.
So after say 1200, Pycrete technology might be innovated, but the innovation would spread much more slowly through the inuit culture. Whereas in the expansion period, or even shortly after the expansion period, it would spread like wildfire.
And of course, there's only a few centuries from 1200 to European contact in 1700 and 1800, and that might not be enough time to fully explore all the ramifications, particularly if the technology is being adopted slowly and conservatively.
Our time window for the inuit 'civilization' is pretty narrow comparably. Lets say 900 to 1800. Or maybe 900 to 1900 at best.
So, if we're going to have butterflies, let's put em where they'll do the most good.
Okay, now, in terms of the Thule/Inuit, here's the thing about the hunter/gatherer subsistence lifestyle: Without the ability to store quantities of food, even temporarily, your population is determined by the season of highest scarcity.
Let's take the following hypothetical. If you actually look hard enough, you can find academic studies which give you actual detail as to the traditional diets of aboriginals around the year, and relative productivity. But for this example, I'm making it up.
* Spring - diet - Caribou on migration. Supports 20
* Summer - Rabbits, fox, ptarmigan, small game, fishing. Edible roots and berries. Supports 30
* Fall - Dwindling small game, dwindling fish, berryseason is over, edible roots available. Supports 10
* Winter - Ice fishing, seals, walrus. Supports 25
Now, what's our inuit population year round? 10. Notwithstanding that other seasons support a larger population, the scarcest season can only support 10. You can't store or transfer surplus from other seasons, so in the fall season, there's only enough to feed 10. More than that, you've got starvation.
Since you can't store a surplus from the other seasons, that surplus goes uneaten.
Now, a couple of observations, actually, aboriginals or inuit did have some food storage techniques. Drying or smoking, or hammering meat into a paste, drying it out, and then saturating it with berry juice, called Pemmican. But it was small scale and labour intensive. So not a lot of long term or seasonal storage which would significantly affect population.
Second, when you're in that subsistence mode, and trapped by the season of scarcity, the only thing that you can do to avoid starvation is to move, expand your territory, or move into new territories. This makes your culture highly mobile. This is why the Thule/Inuit spread so rapidly from their Alaskan homeland into Siberia, across the Canadian North and into Greenland within the space of a century or so. They were expanding and moving fast and visibly displacing or overwhelming the previous culture.
So Pycrete as a small or large material for constructing summer season cold storage or freezers could be extremely significant in creating a larger population, because it allows seasonal surpluses to be amortized through the whole year. If you can transfer surpluses from other seasons, then potentially, in our example, your sustainable population goes from 10 to 20 or 25.
But it also inhibits mobility. A Pycrete oriented Inuit society makes more use of resources, sustains a larger population, but doesn't have to travel as far. So with Pycrete, the Inuit expansion and displacement of the Dorset culture might be a lot slower and take a lot longer. Of course, that itself might make an interesting butterly. But maybe not necessarily the one we want.
So, probably what you want is Pycrete emerging relatively late in the expansion, or after the expansion. Instead of around or before 900, then you're looking at 1000 or 1100.
If could happen at any time later of course. But my impression is that once cultures reach their maximum resource usage, they start to get conservative. Once you've covered your maximum territory, utilized all the recognized foodstuffs and maxed your population, trial and error gets dangerous. Basically, trial and error has a failure rate, and when you're at max, failure is devastating, best to stick with the tried and true. Innovation proceeds much more slowly.
So after say 1200, Pycrete technology might be innovated, but the innovation would spread much more slowly through the inuit culture. Whereas in the expansion period, or even shortly after the expansion period, it would spread like wildfire.
And of course, there's only a few centuries from 1200 to European contact in 1700 and 1800, and that might not be enough time to fully explore all the ramifications, particularly if the technology is being adopted slowly and conservatively.
Our time window for the inuit 'civilization' is pretty narrow comparably. Lets say 900 to 1800. Or maybe 900 to 1900 at best.
So, if we're going to have butterflies, let's put em where they'll do the most good.
Here are some abridged wikipedia notes on the Rock Ptarmigan. Closely related to the Willow Ptarmigan or Willow Grouse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Ptarmigan
Also:
http://www.mbgnet.net/sets/tundra/animals/ptar.html
So basically, we have a sedentary species living across the arctic, surprisingly approachable, whose diet seems to be pretty easy to manage, of small but not unreasonable size, and decent egg laying and incubation rate. It seems to be a decent candidate for domestication, and fits a decent niche 'small domestic meat animal' kind of like guineau pigs, chicken, turkey.
I note that it wasn't domesticated by the Icelanders, so that's a strike against it. But if we're contemplating an Agricultural/Herding Inuit culture, then its
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Ptarmigan
Also:
http://www.mbgnet.net/sets/tundra/animals/ptar.html
So basically, we have a sedentary species living across the arctic, surprisingly approachable, whose diet seems to be pretty easy to manage, of small but not unreasonable size, and decent egg laying and incubation rate. It seems to be a decent candidate for domestication, and fits a decent niche 'small domestic meat animal' kind of like guineau pigs, chicken, turkey.
I note that it wasn't domesticated by the Icelanders, so that's a strike against it. But if we're contemplating an Agricultural/Herding Inuit culture, then its
Hi DValdron. Your most excellent contributions of information are really bringing this Time Line to life for me. Your thoughts on food have really given me food for thought
Hi DValdron. Your most excellent contributions of information are really bringing this Time Line to life for me. Your thoughts on food have really given me food for thought
Well, there's some private stuff going on between me and DirtyCommie. I think that when he or we are ready to launch, its going to be rocking.
Northern Expansion
Let's suppose a larger inuit population, and a more diversified package that includes agriculture regarding a handful of staples and animal husbandry. With greater population there'd be more pressure to expand. Obviously, there'd be efforts to expand south. But there's rival societies that might be hard to displace.
Right now, I'm interested in touching on northern expansion. Obviously, the deeper into the arctic circle you go, the more you shift away from agriculture to animal husbandry and hunting. But that would basically be changing the ratios in the inuit package, rather than creating a new package. And even the reduced or marginalized elements might provide a little bit more safety.
So, the Inuit civilization, or its outliers, would tend to penetrate further and deeper than the OTL Inuit culture. Where would they go?
According to these maps of the expansion of Inuit/Thule culture, by 1300, the Inuit/Thule have reached and occupy Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. A couple of centuries later, probably due to the little ice age, they're out of Northern Greenland, but dominating the east and west coasts.
So where do they go from there, circa 1300?
Let's suppose a larger inuit population, and a more diversified package that includes agriculture regarding a handful of staples and animal husbandry. With greater population there'd be more pressure to expand. Obviously, there'd be efforts to expand south. But there's rival societies that might be hard to displace.
Right now, I'm interested in touching on northern expansion. Obviously, the deeper into the arctic circle you go, the more you shift away from agriculture to animal husbandry and hunting. But that would basically be changing the ratios in the inuit package, rather than creating a new package. And even the reduced or marginalized elements might provide a little bit more safety.
So, the Inuit civilization, or its outliers, would tend to penetrate further and deeper than the OTL Inuit culture. Where would they go?
According to these maps of the expansion of Inuit/Thule culture, by 1300, the Inuit/Thule have reached and occupy Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. A couple of centuries later, probably due to the little ice age, they're out of Northern Greenland, but dominating the east and west coasts.
So where do they go from there, circa 1300?
Now, let's assume that the Inuit were able to survive and thrive in 1300 on the Northern Coast of Greenland. From the Northern Coast, it's a short jump to Svalbard. It's actually dramatically shorter, maybe half the distance, than the Norse leap from Iceland to their colonies in Greenland.
From Svalbard, its another short jump to the russian Islands archipelago known as Franz Josef Land. And then another short jump to Novaya Zemyla, the big Islands. And from there, its literally a stroll to the Russian arctic.
I say 'short jumps' it's still actually a pretty substantial distance by any stretch of the imagination. That's not guaranteed at all.
The OTL Inuit were fair enough sailors that they managed to get across most of the Canadian arctic archipelago and even colonize the tip of siberia, in OTL, but this was clearly too big a jump for the OTL Inuit. They never made it to Svalbard. The farthest sailing distances in the Canadian Arctic archipelago and Greenland were a fraction of the jumps to Svalbard, Franz Joseph and Novaya Zemyla.
Could the ATL Inuit do it? And what reason would they have? Well, my thinking is population pressure forcing northern expansion, and as the north grows more and more difficult for the agricultural parts of their package, they refine and expand the animal domestication and hunting/fishing parts of the package. So, perhaps the Inuit are forced to become more effective or aggressive whalers.
Pursuit of whales leads them to Svalbard and eventual settlement there, and then to the subsequent jumps.
Come the little ice age, the Inuit are in trouble. But even if thrown back to their orginal subsistence toolkit, they might be able to make a go of it in these places, once they reach them. The Inuit colonies there might become isolated, but they might be sustainable, and keep the elements of the larger package.
From Svalbard, its another short jump to the russian Islands archipelago known as Franz Josef Land. And then another short jump to Novaya Zemyla, the big Islands. And from there, its literally a stroll to the Russian arctic.
I say 'short jumps' it's still actually a pretty substantial distance by any stretch of the imagination. That's not guaranteed at all.
The OTL Inuit were fair enough sailors that they managed to get across most of the Canadian arctic archipelago and even colonize the tip of siberia, in OTL, but this was clearly too big a jump for the OTL Inuit. They never made it to Svalbard. The farthest sailing distances in the Canadian Arctic archipelago and Greenland were a fraction of the jumps to Svalbard, Franz Joseph and Novaya Zemyla.
Could the ATL Inuit do it? And what reason would they have? Well, my thinking is population pressure forcing northern expansion, and as the north grows more and more difficult for the agricultural parts of their package, they refine and expand the animal domestication and hunting/fishing parts of the package. So, perhaps the Inuit are forced to become more effective or aggressive whalers.
Pursuit of whales leads them to Svalbard and eventual settlement there, and then to the subsequent jumps.
Come the little ice age, the Inuit are in trouble. But even if thrown back to their orginal subsistence toolkit, they might be able to make a go of it in these places, once they reach them. The Inuit colonies there might become isolated, but they might be sustainable, and keep the elements of the larger package.