Origins of the Inuit
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It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we're exploring the story of the early Inuit, the Tule Inuit. This is the incredible tale of how these people managed to survive and thrive in the Arctic more than a thousand years ago.

They expanded out from present-day Alaska east across North America all the way to Greenland. They built very interesting and sophisticated subterranean houses that kept out the freezing cold, some with their own kitchen extensions. They invented a huge range of gadgets that allowed them to hunt an extraordinary array of different animals on land and at sea depending on the season. Whales, bears, caribou, seals, you name it.

The early Inuit have an amazing story and it's right that we now cover them on the ancients, the first time that we've explored archaeology and ancient history north of the Arctic Circle. To explain all about this, our guest today is the archaeologist Raven Todd De Silva, who has just written a new book exploring many different ancient civilizations across the world that have been overlooked in the history books, including that of the early Inuit in North America and Greenland.

As soon as I saw that this was one of the ancient civilizations Raven covered in her book, well, I was determined to get her on the show to talk all about it. We recorded this episode in person at the Spotify studio in London, and Raven was fantastic. Enjoy.

Raven, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It's lovely to be here. Thanks so much, Tristan. And I think this is a first in the ancients after more than 500 episodes. This is the first time that we're going north of the Arctic Circle. Really? But what a topic. I mean, the early Inuit, of all people, civilizations who had to like kind of survive and then thrive in these difficult climatic conditions. And I think this is a first for us.

Surely there are none more extraordinary stories than that of the early Inuit. Oh, 100%. They are pure examples of just the human spirit and wanting to survive in the most harsh conditions.

And they really don't get enough attention, a lot of the other Arctic cultures as well, even those living up there today. Let's focus in on it. I mean, first of all, no such thing as a silly question. Who were the early Inuit? So the Tule Inuit is sort of like the main name that we have for them at the moment. They were...

the predecessors to all of the current Inuit tribes or groups of people that we have that exist today up in the Arctic. So that is northern Alaska, Canada, and then parts of Greenland. And they... That's hundreds of thousands and thousands of kilometers, isn't it? Yeah, it's just, I still can't fathom it. I'm from Canada and I still can't fathom how big that country really is, especially when you're going up north. And they really...

just spread throughout that entire area they came to light around 1000 CE the year 1000 they originally they think right now they kind of originated from the burner culture they were the descendants of the old Bering Sea culture people so that think like Siberia Alaska so like way way way west in North America Russia like the very tip of Siberia and Alaska we have this

These people kind of just coming back over into the North American continent and then evolving into what we have as the Thule coming as an identifiable culture around 1900 to 1000. We'll delve into all of that. And it's interesting you said that eastward movement almost from the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait. And you mentioned there, so Thule, is that the word that is...

What do we mean by the word Thule? So the word Thule was first coined for the culture itself by a Danish archaeologist named Thurkel Matthiessen, if I'm saying that correctly. Difficult name there. And he, well, I don't want to say discovered, but was able to sort of identify the Thule as a cohesive culture in the 1920s during the fifth Danish expedition into sort of Greenland. And he named it after one of the sites there called Umanak. But the word itself comes from ancient Greek.

And they use that term to refer to the most northern lands. At the time, we think it is the Shetland Islands in Scotland. Other people think it's some northern bits of Scandinavia. We'll never really know. Just north of Greece, which, you know, very, very north. Very, very north, yes. Could be anywhere, really.

That's sort of where that name originates from. I had heard that name before. I think it's the voyage of Pythias, one of these Greek explorers who goes past the British Isles. It's interesting how that label from an ancient Greek becomes associated with the early Inuit. Around roughly 1000 AD or 1000 CE, we're learning more about these people over a huge area. What types of sources do we have? Is it just archaeology? What types of archaeology do we have?

Archaeology is one of the major things that we have because we have that amazing frozen tundra and it's amazing for that preservation. Of course, not everything gets preserved even within the ice, unfortunately. And so we do rely a lot on Inuit elders and knowledge keepers.

and they really do help bring those oral histories because that's so important for a lot of cultures. They fill in the blanks with the archaeological evidence. These are all histories, so this is knowledge and information that's been passed down generation after generation? Exactly, yeah. Okay, 1000 CE or AD. It's a bit later on than what we usually cover on The Ancients, but given that it's such an amazing topic, when I saw it as one of your chapters of your book, I thought we have to delve into it.

But if we go a bit further back in time, you mentioned it briefly there, but do we know much about the origins of the early Inuit, of who they are descended from? We just have these major things with, you know, the old Bering Sea people, cultures, and then we also have the Bernerk. They were...

were largely sea mammal hunters. That's kind of the main thing. They had dog sledding. They hunted whales. They hunted seals, walruses. And they sort of all began to create their individual cultures and art forms within Alaska around that time. So around 200 BC, we start seeing that evidence. And then they sort of

in cultures throughout time. Obviously, everything gets evolving as technology evolves and everything like that. And then we get the Thule sort of in that year, that 1,000 year. But it's still not as well understood as we would like because it is very difficult to excavate in these very northern places, not just for funding because no one really wants to

They're not as well known, of course, so all the money goes other places. But also just the difficulty of getting into the permafrost and finding what's left. It's just very complicated. Complicated. We'll just say that. I mean, no, because I have seen, like doing a bit of research of this, and in the past I've looked at some of these Arctic sites and archaeologies happening. And for instance, in Alaska,

It's not just in central Alaska or southern Alaska. I've seen a couple of examples of archaeological work going on on the northern coast of Alaska, not far from the northernmost point of the United States. So to do excavations up there, first you've got to be a hardy breed of person. But also I can imagine you don't have much time during the year to do that as well. No, you need to be in there in the warmer months before the permafrost sets in or just the sea ice as well. But then that also makes...

quite a volatile place to dig, right? If you're digging somewhere that's on that edge there, that stuff will get really worn away quite easily over the years. So you need to work very quickly. We've already lost so much in comparison to that as well because of those volatile environments. That freeze-thaw is one of the major things if you're looking at art conservation and how the archaeological record is preserved.

That is one of the major issues we get when things are destroyed and lost forever. Absolutely. Well, let's focus in on that migration and that kind of expanding of the two-lay Inuit. Because you mentioned right at the beginning how they go as east as Greenland.

Do we know much about the nature of those migrations, of how the Thule Inuit end up settling in such a large area? What's really interesting is that we've been studying this migration for over 100 years. And it's still a mystery. It's still one of those things that we still don't quite completely understand. And there's always been different sorts of theories as to why suddenly we have this very well-known

culture in Alaska, it's also very densely populated at this time with a bunch of other cultures. So there's trade, there's exchange going on. What is making them suddenly just up and leave to go completely across the country? And in the northern bits, there's lots of islands, there's, you know, shore hopping, everything like that, plus getting over to Greenland. It's just a

unfathomable and they did it in such a short period of time. So we first think they started at doing it. The initial carbon dates said that they started doing it around 1000 CE, but later reinterpretations say that they did that. They did it around the 13th century. And that's actually when we start seeing them in Greenland. So within the span of 100 years, give or take, they somehow ended up from Alaska to Greenland.

And that's so fast. And we don't know why it could have been interpersonal. We do see a little bit of an uptick in armor made out of animal bones being created more in the archaeological record around this time. We see that there's some human remains that show up with

trauma that have been from battle. And so people, they might have been subject to, you know, some sort of discrimination or they might have wanting to get out because of that, you know, interpersonal conflicts, as we like to call it in archaeology.

So that could have been one thing. It could have been the hunting of the bowhead whale. The bowhead whale. The bowhead whale. Okay, interesting. Yes, they are huge. I looked it up for this podcast specifically because I needed to know the exact stats of a bowhead whale for everyone listening. They are between 16 and 18 meters long.

And they weigh around 80 tons. Whoa. So that is a huge whale. It's terrifying. They also have the largest amount of baleen, so that is a huge resource for the Thule. Where we've got the baleen, we have the blubber for fuel, we have the bones for making their houses. So they're very resource-rich animals. Blubber for fuel, so they can be used to create fires, can't it? Yes. Yeah. Nice, good grease fire. It doesn't smell very good, but it really works.

So these things are huge and they're great resources and they are actually unique to the Tule Inuit. For them, they're the ones that are hunting these. No other hunter-gatherer in the time, at that time, around the entire world is actually hunting these bowhead whales or doing this amount of like intense whaling.

So at first they were thinking maybe they're following the sites to get the optimal hunting for these bowhead whales. But then they hit those and they keep going. They keep going. They just keep going all the way to Greenland. And then other people were thinking maybe it's metals because they loved metal, but they couldn't smelt it themselves. So a lot of these Arctic...

They were using metal from the old Bering Sea against for them Siberia the Bering Strait So that's where they learn at least about metals and because I think like Mesoamerica and they don't obviously they don't really have metals that they have obsidian but not copper or iron or anything like that, but

But, so it is from Asia that they learn about the use of metals in tools maybe or something like that? Initially, yes. So they started to use it for their own tools. They were like, "Well, this is actually really great." Because everyone, when they discover metals, realized this is pretty great. So they started to really covet that and use it for their own tools. And it actually helped them. They used it a lot to also make better wooden tools, better bone tools. So again, it was like tools for making tools and just really utilitarian.

But then if you move further east, we do get these larger bits and sources of copper and iron. So that's all the way in Greenland. But we don't know how they knew about all of this iron. You know, the Cape York meteorite in Greenland. There's a big meteorite up there. Huge meteorite. And that's the best source of iron that you can get without smelting. How did they know about that? And they wouldn't have known about it until they were probably halfway through that migration.

to then discuss with the Dorset culture that was there before them. And they sort of like replaced the Dorset in that eastern Arctic in Canada, and then figured out that there's more iron over there. So it was probably, as a lot of things with archaeology, probably a lot of reasons. And those reasons probably would have changed while the migration was going. But

We will still probably never know. And the amount of how quick it was, was still shocking because they didn't settle down enough to really create like an actual society, to reproduce enough to leave people behind. They just kept going, snap, snap, snap, all the way down to Greenland. And then eventually they introduced themselves to the Norse and that's where they were getting iron from the East as well. So getting more metal.

interaction with the Norse, possibly. It's so interesting that human desire, or at least a few people have an intrepid desire to go further. I know in other of your chapters it's all about the Lapita people, isn't it? And the Polynesians. You can kind of see that similar mindset with them wanting to go out in their little canoes to try and find the next island.

It can be interesting to think if there maybe was a similar thing in the mindset of some of these Thule adventurers, those people going east. What I also found so interesting there, Raven, is you mentioned that there's already this other culture out there, the Dorset culture. You almost have to shift your view of the world of North America on its head to remember

of humans first coming to North America through the Bering Strait, that being a land bridge, and Alaska at that time quite being heavily populated, and people making that journey eastwards, and people before the too-late Inuit. And then you do get to the too-late Inuit, following in the footsteps of people who'd gone before them, going eastwards across the northern part of North America. It's really interesting to think of it that way compared to when we think of these big centres today being in, well, southern Canada, Toronto, or further south in the United States.

It's absolutely just wild to think that, you know, instead of going south where it was warmer, they just went, we're just going to keep going east. And I just don't understand that myself personally. I prefer the warmth. I don't know why I moved to this country if I prefer the warmth, but here we are. And it is just so admirable and a real testament to just how they chose to live and wanted to live and decided on that rather than just kind of

figure out a better way. But that's just, that's the way of life that they knew. They're moving on, they're interacting with other people. And, you know, the Dorset had been there about maybe 500 years before they even showed up. And the Dorset, I think they're more well-known than the Tulei.

And they had this, I think it's mostly because of their art, they had this amazing soapstone vessels. Oh, yeah. And what I find so interesting is that the two, they pretty much just completely replaced the Dorset. And they don't, but because they don't have this really, to our standards, beautiful art style that people are drawn to or want to study more, they're not as well known. They're not as well studied. They're not as well appreciated. And they're...

And, you know, even the Thule themselves, they weren't, they didn't seem to be a fan of the Dorset because they kept their ceramics and their cooking vessels from Alaska. They actually were bringing their, like, you know, their pottery and everything from there. They weren't using the soapstone vessels until much later. They were really keeping their roots from Alaska. Yeah.

And then we found one of those reasons, again, for migration. We were thinking they're bringing the metal back to Alaska. We don't see that either. So there's this really interesting kind of way that the Thule are choosing to live their life and migrate within this very short period of time and how they're choosing to interact with other people. And it's just a really fun puzzle.

Forgive my ignorance, what is soapstone? This is just another kind of stone material? Yeah, it's just another kind of stone. It's very easy to carve. I guess we get it from soap, it's just that very nice malleable stuff. It is beautiful and it's just nice to make really nice pots. Dorset and a lot of other Inuit cultures make these amazing sculptures out of it. I highly recommend just looking up Dorset sculpture. It's absolutely stunning. That's my ignorance there talking. But it's also interesting how once again you can use pottery and ceramics to track that migration eastwards that we've already talked about.

Well, let's explore more the lifestyle of the Thule Inuit. I'd love to learn a bit more about this. Particularly, let's focus first off, I mean, how they lived. Do we know much about the houses of the Thule Inuit north of the Arctic Circle? The houses are my favourite part of the Thule. And they are, luckily, the thing that we have the most archaeological evidence for, and it is what we can get the most evidence.

information from and that I love because a lot of times with archaeology you're more with the bigger things right and this we're getting that very domestic very human way of life so they lived in a few different types of houses we've got their summer quote-unquote tents and they're called the two peak and they are just normal tents you know a ring of stone some animal skin and those were used to

hunt a little bit further inland and get the caribou, get the char, the musk ox, and the smaller animals, birds. And that's how they would hunt in the summer to get their stores up for winter. But later periods, we get these sort of in-between houses, the autumnal early winter houses, and they are called carmax. And those were really fun because they're like a mix between the winter house and the summer house. And they're a little bit dug into the ground and then have, again, those

Dug into the ground a bit, are they? Or is it that for the foundations? Yeah, so just a little bit. Not too much, but enough to just have a foundation there. And then you have the stones around it again, and you're able to maybe put a bit more of a fire in there and then have those animal skins. But the really cool ones are the winter houses. And they're made...

Again, they are subterranean or semi-subterranean. And so they're deep set into the ground. The floors are usually paved with either gravel or flagstones. There's stones as well surrounding them, again, with the little bit of those built walls. And then whale bones. Whale bones on top. Whale bones on top. That's like the roofing structure. And it's so fun. And then those were then covered with animal skins and then sawed to just really insulate the whole thing. The

The most ingenious part for me is the entrance, because the entrance was built about 40 centimeters below the actual floor level of the house. And we all learned this in school thermodynamics, cold air is heavier than hot air. And so it settles. And this was their way of trapping the cold air out. Oh, clever. Very clever. Yeah. And so they'd have this. A few of them would also be sort of extended with snow as a wind trap.

And you could just crawl through this tunnel to get into your house, come up those 40 centimeters, and then you're into this amazing warm space.

toasty house there were sleeping platforms so you're not sleeping on the ground they had some of them at the beginning especially had these little other tunnels that led to kitchens eventually more than just one room the how can we have two little different rooms in your cozy little house exactly yeah and so you can go in and like have your cooking being separate eventually they became alcoves and then more like fires right in the middle and they had all of these this tech I

I love the Thule. They've been called like the most gadget-oriented people of the prehistoric times. And I think that's so true. They had so many fun gadgets. And you can see that a lot in their household. So not just the...

technology of you know having the house built the way it is but in the little stoves that they had compiled with you can see the all the that blubber we talked about earlier kind of flying down there with all these flagstones and then you have all the pots that are surrounding it they had dryers that sort of were circular and they hung above the fires as like drying racks for your clothes because you're going outside you're getting quite covered in snow absolutely they had

kind of like cold boxes outside which are again just bits dug into the ice where you can store all of your food so if you get bored of whale and seal and walrus meat in the winter you go out get yourself a little musk ox little treat and then you can go in and just do all of it musk they're small little animals aren't they they're small but you can't get them in the winter time so for them it's like a

a little treat, like a summertime treat, like how when we, you know, kind of get nowadays an avocado in the wintertime. Oh, you know, these taste like summer. And so that was their way of sort of making sure that they could have that varied diet in the winter as well.

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They had really complex houses, didn't they? They're really clever house designs and how they're able to survive, not just survive, but thrive in these environments. Oh, for sure. Like if I had that, I definitely would understand now why you can survive in a negative 40 degree. Negative 40. That's what we think. At least like it gets negative 40 in Canada in the winter. So even colder up there, I'm imagining and constant.

And so imagining how you can survive in those weathers and just not just survive, but also we said thrive and have this hunting that's going on. And you're getting the skins from the seals and the caribou to keep yourself really insulated in the winter. You have these amazing snow goggles, which were... Snow goggles? Snow goggles. Okay. Yeah. I'm hooked. We love snow goggles. They're like one of my favorite things.

artifacts I think that I wrote about in this book, they are very thin. So they're not like the ski goggles that you would think of today, the really cool fancy ones. Not like that. But I think I would feel a lot cooler wearing the Thule ones. They are very thin like slits, pieces of wood or antler or bone. And then they just kind of fit over your eye, but there's a thin slit

that just kind of goes to where your eyesight would be. And that sort of just blocks out all the snow and that allows them to see they're still used today by Arctic cultures as well. They're efficient, they're very well-made and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And they're just absolutely beautiful as well. You can see them, some of them have really nice designs on them. Like they were made for purpose, but they really did take care of creating them and they're just ingenious.

Before we go into the hunting and more of these gadgets, a bit more on the houses and the wider settlements. Would there have been hundreds of these houses together? Do we know the average settlement size of one of the early Inuits? The ones that we're seeing that are, again, these more multi-generational permanent houses, the largest ones that we've found, there's about 60. Not huge, but that

But that is quite big. Considerable, yeah. Yeah. But on average, it would be about like 15, 30. We're thinking they were, you know, extended families or I guess like a few families that were cooperating together because hunting a giant whale that's 18 meters long is...

It takes a few people. You need that cooperation. So they needed to stick together. Domestic houses. Were they the main types of buildings in these settlements or did they have the centre of a community type building as well? So most of the houses were these individual family houses, but there is some evidence, not at every site, but of these other buildings called kagase. I'm sorry if I pronounce that completely incorrect, but they were these much larger houses.

And they were larger buildings that seemed to have been used for creating tools, preparing meat, preparing hides and skins. They say it's more of a male-dominated space for the hunting and everything, but that would be much more of like a community, maybe a ritual building. And later on, when we see the Thule sort of changing and evolving when we get into the Little Ice Age and they're having to adapt their way of life,

Then we see a lot more of these people sort of moving into these much larger communal houses to, again, help with that food shortage because it's a little ice age. It's a little more difficult to get food. So they start coming together a little bit more and losing that individual household type lifestyle. Last thing on the houses. I've got to ask about igloos. Were they such a thing with the tule?

So there is evidence that they definitely could have built igloos and snow houses, but they're not as efficient as the winter houses. Why have an igloo or a snow house when you can have this amazing...

technological, a smart house, let's call it, right? So they were, you know, a lot of them are used, again, it's not permanent settlements, snow houses, even today, but they are, they do serve a purpose, but they weren't something that we would say that we have a lot of evidence for with the Thule. It's interesting how you highlighted at the beginning of this section, how like there are different styles of houses almost for the different seasons.

Does that really reinforce a point for the way of life of the Tule Inuits? It really does depend on the season and they almost have to adapt, almost change their lifestyle to suit the season in the Arctic. 100%. So this is where a lot of that amazing oral history from the Inuit elders and the knowledge keepers comes from. They've filled in these blanks for us with how they could possibly have moved around during the seasons. So

That early spring, kind of early summer type vibe. You'd go in and you'd get the migratory birds. They had these amazing bolas. So it's two rocks that are attached to a string, essentially, or two heavy weights, two rope balls. You kind of whip it in the air and it wraps around the bird. A little bit graphic, but then the bird can't fly anymore. So then down it comes. That's got to be accurate for that throw, though. I mean, that's a lot of skill behind that. Yeah, I've...

I don't think I could do it, to be honest. They had bows and arrows as well, but that for them, I think, was a really good way of doing it. And then they would get, again, those smaller animals, the muskox, the rabbits, the hares, anything that would be sort of thriving in that area. Then later on, so again, early, let's say like late summer, early autumn, we get the caribou, we get the char that's kind of doing crossing. So they're being very mindful of crossing

the movements of their surroundings, the animals in their surroundings. They had bear hunting in the summer as well. And then when we get into those winter months where you're settling down a lot more, you have your stores, but you still need fresh meat and everything. So then you start doing a lot more

Whale hunting, you do walrus, you do ringed seal. Actually, they talk a lot about the whale, the bowhead whale, but they actually, their most popular diet, I guess, was the ringed seal. They did so much ringed seal hunting. And then that was also a lot through breathing holes.

through the boats that they had. So they had the kayak, they had the umayak, which is a very large boat, and that was for the larger animals. Probably also a testament to their ability to migrate because they could fit about 12 people or more with all of their tech, all their gadgets. But it was helpful for hunting these whales and these walruses because it was a cooperative event. You needed people to man the boat, keep it upright, and then you needed someone to harpoon the whale.

So that's sort of what they were doing throughout the year, just being very mindful of the resources that were available to them. Okay, so we've got bows and arrows. We've got that interesting contraption that you highlighted for migratory birds with the two stones wrapping around the wings so they can't fly. You just mentioned harpoons for whales and also for seals, creating a hole in the ice, a breathing hole and waiting around and then striking the animal.

But it sounds like they had a variety of different weapons and hunting techniques so that they could hunt these many different types of animals that roamed the landscape that they lived in. That's why they're called the most gadget-oriented people because they had everything.

They had whatever you needed, essentially. They had a toolbox of different types of harpoon heads. They had the most diverse array of harpoon heads, which is crazy. Just all different types that they wanted. There were, again, yes, those bows and arrows. And they also had these amazing bits on the end of their harpoons, actually, if we come back to those. And they were these little ivory and antler and bone spikes, essentially, that they could

jab into the ice to make sure that the giant animal that they just speared and killed wouldn't sink to the bottom. They also had floats, which were really cool, out of animal skins. And then they had little wooden stoppers that you could just blow them up like a regular buoy today. And then that would also aid in making sure that the animal that they just killed isn't going to just sink to the bottom of the sea. It's so interesting, isn't it? And so

Is the word 'hunter-gatherer' relevant if we're talking about them if they're moving? I know they're not farming, but I feel hunter-gatherers are sometimes used almost to encapsulate all of these different peoples, and it might be a bit more complicated than that. It is a difficult term. People have referred to them as hunter-gatherers because they aren't doing that agriculture. But I would also call them very similar to, I would say, the Jomon of Japan, collectors.

Right. So it's like that mix of they're being very aware of what's sort of being grown and what animals are available. So it is more of that hunter-gatherer style. But because you're up north, you're not really moving around. You're just kind of making sure you're going further inland back to the sea and so on like that. So it's not like these larger areas.

swaths that you would imagine that people always think about with hunter-gatherers where they move huge amounts. And that's not even a reality for most hunter-gatherers anyway, but everyone thinks that. They weren't farming, but they weren't, I would say, completely just relying solely on animals. I'm sure that they had a lot of, again, because of the archaeological record, you don't have much evidence, as always, for these organic materials, but they definitely would have been able to

sort of cultivate some plants and learn how to really make the most out of what was growing out of the ground. Absolutely. And it's just really interesting to imagine, let's say, if they have a bowhead whale and they've transported it back to the village or parts of it, or a seal, a ringed seal, as you highlight, or another type of animal. Does it feel like this was a community? I mean, these people, would they make use of almost every available part of

of a carcass so nothing went to waste. They could do a huge variety of things with the carcass. Oh, for sure. You need to be able to

make sure that you're using as much as possible because you don't know when your next whale is going to come, right? It's thinking about Moby Dick. You chase those whales. But whales themselves, you know, there's not as many as you really think there are. They're not as populous in the waters and, again, very seasonal with their migrations. So you need to make sure that you are storing for the winter, especially in those very dangerous environments, that you need to have

that resource. So every part we have, again, the blubber for the fuel, the skins for your clothing, for your house. And then you have the bones for, again, your house, but also to make other tools and weapons and armor, which is really cool. We have armor surviving as well, do we? Yes. And especially in Alaska, we see that there's like walrus bones.

bone armour, which is pretty cool. You don't have metal, so you need to make armour out of something. I've never heard of... Because metal, I'm guessing in short supply, it's only that little bit that they've brought eastwards with them. I mean, yeah, I've never heard of walrus bone armour before, so that is definitely a first. It is really cool. I think the Mycenaeans used a few boar tusks with their helmets as well, but it's just fascinating to think of just bone and ivory being used as armour, because you don't think about that naturally, so it's interesting to see how other people would have used

the materials that they had available to them to defend themselves.

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Away from tools that are used as weapons, do we have many other types of tools being discovered in these settlements of Tule Inuits? Yeah, so we have flensing knives. I guess that's sort of for hunting as well. But, you know, for creating the skins and getting the meat off of everything. My favorite thing are these baleen snow beaters.

It's, again, one of those things you just don't normally think about until you need it. And I think we need to bring these back in Canada or anywhere where it snows. They were just made out of baling and you come in from the tundra and the snow outside and you just beat your coat, get the snow all off of it, which is really useful because it does get stuck in clumps, especially if you're using skins and furs, you get these big clumps of snow.

If anyone has an animal or a dog that goes outside in the wintertime and comes back in, you understand it's just a nightmare when they're melting off everywhere. So I love those. We talked about the drying racks. And we had a lot of toys. Toys? Yes.

They maybe not are the toys that you would expect or that you think of nowadays, but they're mini harpoon throwing boards, mini harpoon heads, mini arrows, bows and arrows for the children to sort of learn how to become a really like, you know, a valuable member of that society. But we also have drums. We found drum skins and like rings. And do you know the ball and cup game? No, I don't. No. What is this? So...

They have their own version. It was called ajagak, I believe. And then it was not quite a ball, but it's sort of what you can think about nowadays is where there's like a stick with a little cup on top and a ball attached to a string and it's all attached. And you have to try and swing the ball up into the cup. And they had that, but with a bone that had a few holes poked into it. And this, again, just the stick, and you have to try and get that bone, swing it up, let it attach onto the string and get one of the holes to go through the stick and

and get it to balance on it. It's a very interesting game. That is now recognisable to me. This is amazing, isn't it? They're so different to us nowadays, but also so similar in so many things. And I guess another thing where you can also look at that kind of similarity is

Dogs. So dogs were an important part of their societies too? They had dog sledding and that's been around for thousands of years, but they had a lot of really great tech for that as well. They had these amazing walrus clasps, which was really cool to see from their sledding shoes.

So they did use dogs for hunting as well, yeah. So overland hunting with the use of dogs. You mentioned those two types of boats that they have for hunting in the sea and then creating those breathing holes. Polar bears and narwhals, two other big beasts that we think of in the Arctic, were they also hunted by the Thule Inuit? We do have some evidence for some narwhal tusk items. Polar bears, I personally don't know, but they did hunt bears. So I'm assuming some of them probably were polar. Well, thank you for answering that very quickly.

Moving on, so they've done all of this migration and expanding as far east as Greenland. When do you start to see in the archaeological record evidence of contact, well, with Europe in particular, with the Scandinavians, with the Vikings? So there is some evidence once they reach Greenland that there was some contact, at least, with the Norse. We're not sure if that was...

full-on trade or if it was just sort of like they experienced each other. We found some metal artifacts from this place called Ruin Island in Greenland. It's a little bit like on the western side of Greenland and they think they either were from trade or they could have just been salvaged from a Norse shipwreck, these metal tools. But there is, you know, that evidence of somehow them co-mingling, at least interacting and being aware of each other.

And that's throughout, you know, essentially since they get there until the Little Ice Age, when the Norse, they disappear. The Norse disappear. They leave Greenland, right? Especially these areas that the Thule are. But the Thule themselves, they move further south because, again, that permanent ice is

It's just a lot, and it gets a lot colder, and I can understand that. You just want to move a little bit further south. Then from around 1650, we start getting more European contact. They're both making it to North America, but also to Greenland, and they're interacting with

Russia, the Danish, they're doing Canada, England, the US as well in later states as well. And that sort of really starts to affect how they live their lives and how they evolve now into these Inuit cultures that we have today, because they're using that impetus of having to move further south because it is getting colder. They need to go into those warmer areas. But again, they love trade. They love materials. They want gadgets. We've seen that before.

in essentially how they're moving across all of Canada as well as across the Arctic. So this promise of being able to interact with people in the Hudson Bay and southern Greenland and getting all these new resources is another big impetus for them to move south. And then that's how they end up sort of evolving into these newer, more recent cultures. It's interesting because I was going to ask a question like, you know, what happened to the Tule Inuit? And is there

such a thing as a decline. But of course, because they are the ancestors of the modern Inuit, it feels difficult to ask that. But can you look at something with that Little Ice Age? Because you mentioned that in the past and I haven't asked to elaborate on that, but I think we probably should now. Do you see a change of lifestyle with this Little Ice Age period that happens? We do. So the Little Ice Age happened around 1400-1500 that year. And

Because it gets a lot colder, that sea ice becomes a lot harder and thicker and it doesn't defrost during those seasons. They have to rely a lot more on that ice hole fishing with the walruses and everything like that. The breathing hole, is that right? The breathing hole, exactly. With the breathing hole hunting, that's a really big staple with Arctic cultures today. That's how that evolves because of necessity. They rely less on

these other sort of like much northern animals. And then so with that moving south, they move into larger community houses that we mentioned. And then because of that, they're also able then to interact with new people. And so we're seeing that change sort of gradually. I would say around the year 1900 is when officially they would say like the two they are done. It's really hard because they are still living ancestors. And when you're talking about indigenous cultures, it is one of this more like continuous tradition.

But we do see that evolving transition happen around, let's say, you know, it's starting in the 1600s and it goes right up until about 1900. But we call classic too late, you know, until about 1500. It is extraordinary. And I'm really happy that we've done this episode together because this is a

A civilisation that I know next to nothing about and to learn all about it, particularly the houses. I mean, just like you, I think the houses are the most incredible thing, particularly those ones you went into a lot of detail on. Was it the winter houses? The winter houses, yeah. If there was an Airbnb, I would definitely rent one. Can you imagine a two-layer Inuit Airbnb? That leads me to one last question, which is, do we think there were two-layer Inuit people who would go from settlement to settlement? Was there trade between these? Because I'm guessing it's not just one nation, it's

their overall class as Tule Inuit, but perhaps these settlements were located over a large area. Was there a lot of movement between these various settlements? From my experience in archaeology, no one ever stays stagnant for very long. No one is isolated. They're always interacting with each other. That would make a lot of sense, especially as they would have been moving eastward. There would have been communication as to

Why? Where? Best routes? And things like that. So 100%, there was have to be this discussion just for the overall survival of

the all the different groups and families you'd have to have this sort of interconnection and networking oh you wish you learn more about it i mean the other thing i remember now that you mentioned earlier was with those toys that they found and hunters and those depictions makes you think mythological like mythology wise whether they were brought up to think of mythological kind of heroic hunters given it was such an important part of their of their lifestyle that

Are some of the toys that you look at, are they supposed to represent these kind of heroic figures in their folklore? I mean, who knows? But it's fascinating to think of, isn't it? It really is. Yeah. Especially we see that folklore always sort of reflects the best ways in order for a society to thrive. And so that would definitely correlate with the stories that were probably told around the fire late at night in those winter houses when you're trying to stave off the very dark, cold seasons.

season. Well, Raven, this has been brilliant. How fascinating was it for you in your book, because you've got chapters covering all of these less known civilizations from across the world, but to sit down and go from, I don't know, from Mesoamerica or from the Mediterranean, to then start looking at the archaeology and the information to hand to learn about the early Inuit, a civilization, I must admit, it feels like, correct me if I'm wrong, but is little focused on.

It really is much little focused on even people I talked to that have done, especially Eastern Arctic archaeology. I told them I was writing about the Thule and they're like, oh my gosh, that's so great. But they were like, I don't know much about them either. And, you know, they're Dorset people, which is quite interesting.

For me, it was really nice. I think when I was writing the book, I wanted to make sure I covered as much geographically as possible. So yes, I was going from, you know, the rainforest to the desert to Oceania to, you know, Central Europe. And then kind of going north, I had never really looked north. I think maybe because also growing up in Canada, you kind of learn, you do learn a lot of Indigenous history, but it's because it's always there. You don't really normally go further into it.

And they don't, obviously they need to do a lot more with that education as well. So for me, it was really nice to revisit that and sort of get further into the

what the true history of this area of the world looked like. And to be honest, it was actually quite nice to cool off a little bit after spending a lot of time in a lot of libraries researching about really hot things in the winter because I was writing most of this book in the wintertime. So it felt really nice to just be very cozy in my big jumpers and my blankets while I was writing and writing about

a very northern place. The cold is something that we normally don't think of a lot with ancient history, and I really wanted to do it justice in the book. So I hope it really comes across that way. I think you're very right. It's about time that we went north of the Arctic Circle on the Ancients podcast, so this episode has satiated that need. But one last thing also, of course,

the early Unite is just one chapter of your book. Tell us a bit more about, I mean, what are some of the other civilizations, peoples that you cover in your book and what it's about?

So the book itself is trying to give the quote-unquote 15 minutes of fame to other ancient civilizations that we normally don't talk about much with popular media, especially if you look at the History Channel or Discovery. It's very Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia focused. Sometimes you'll get the Maya. Sometimes you'll get the Inca. Yep. If you're lucky, right? And...

When you get books, especially about the ancient world, that's usually what it's all focused on. But I really wanted to show that there's so much more history out there. And so when I started to write this book, I focused, the initial impetus was, well, we talk a lot about the Egyptians, but no one talks about the kingdom of Kush and the Nubians. And if we do, it's through the lens of the Egyptians. Why do we do that? Why don't we give them their time to shine? Yeah.

And same with the Etruscans and the Romans. I love the Etruscans. I'm obsessed with the Etruscans. Better than Romans, in my opinion. They had a lot more fun. Yeah. So that's sort of how I started with the book, going, well, what about the Etruscans instead of the Romans? What about the Minoans instead of the Greeks? And then I wanted to go further because, again, everything's very Mediterranean-centric when we talk about the ancient world. So I went into the Amazon.

We know so much about other sites in South America, like Machu Picchu, but what about the Moche? And they're really cool sex pots. I love the sex pots in the Moche. The Marjoara are people that I had never heard of before, right before doing this book, and they're in Brazil. No one thinks a lot about these big Amazonian ones. And I wanted to go and try and get as many continents. We've got six continents in the book. The Lapita, as we mentioned earlier.

the German of ancient Japan I wanted to do more Africa as well so we have great Zimbabwe we have the knock of Nigeria pretty much you throw a dart at a map and I've got something somewhere close by that we just gotta go and find that ancient civilization in Antarctica and then you can do all seven which is good that'll be volume two well and I must also say quickly I mean you have also done the Xiongnu which is my over the world Kazakhstan Mongolia China so yeah

predecessors of the Huns. So yes, lots in that book. And it is called? The Other Ancient Civilizations, Decoding Archaeology's Less Celebrated Cultures. Fantastic. And that is right up my street. Raven, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Well, there you go. There was Raven Todd to Silver talking you through the story, the archaeology of the early Inuit, the Tule Inuit. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. The first time that The Ancients, in more than 500 episodes, has explored archaeology north of the Arctic Circle. So this was really, really great fun to do. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. And

And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. As a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout.

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