Thule people

Based on Wikipedia: Thule people

The People Who Conquered the Arctic

A thousand years ago, while Vikings were sailing west to establish settlements in Greenland and briefly touch the shores of North America, another people were on the move. They traveled not by longship but by kayak and umiak—skin-covered boats that could navigate the ice-choked waters of the Arctic. They hunted the largest animal in those frigid seas: the bowhead whale, a creature that could weigh sixty tons and provide enough food, fuel, and raw materials to sustain an entire community through the brutal polar winter.

These were the Thule people, and they would accomplish something remarkable. Within a few centuries, they spread from Alaska across the entire North American Arctic—thousands of miles of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth—eventually reaching Greenland. In doing so, they displaced the mysterious Dorset culture that had lived there for centuries before them. The Thule are the direct ancestors of all modern Inuit and Yupik peoples.

Their story is one of technological innovation, climate change, and human adaptability at its most extreme.

Origins in the Bering Strait

The Thule didn't emerge from nowhere. Their cultural tradition developed over roughly eighteen hundred years around the Bering Strait—that narrow passage between Alaska and Siberia where, on a clear day, you can see Russia from American soil. The water here is shallow, rarely more than fifty meters deep, and it freezes solid in winter. But in the brief Arctic summer, it teems with marine life: seals, walruses, and the great whales that migrate through these waters.

Archaeologists have identified three developmental stages that led to what we recognize as Thule culture. First came the Old Bering Sea stage, characterized by people who were already skilled maritime hunters. They left behind beautifully decorated ivory harpoon heads, covered in intricate curvilinear patterns of dots, circles, and short lines. This art style is so distinctive that archaeologists can immediately identify Old Bering Sea artifacts.

These early hunters had already figured out something crucial: how to kill and recover large sea mammals. They invented inflatable floats made from sealskin, attached to their harpoon lines. When they struck a seal or walrus, the float would prevent the wounded animal from diving too deep or swimming too far. Without this innovation, much of their prey would have been lost to the dark Arctic waters.

The second stage, called Punuk, showed an intensification of whaling. Punuk settlements were larger than before. The people lived in semi-subterranean houses—rectangular pits dug into the ground, with walls of horizontal logs and frames made from whale jawbones, all covered with skins, sod, and snow. From the outside, these houses were nearly invisible, just slight mounds in the landscape. But inside, they were remarkably well-insulated against the cold.

Whaling required something that seal hunting did not: large-scale cooperation. A single hunter in a kayak might take a seal, but killing a bowhead whale demanded teams of expert boatmen working together in umiaks—large open boats that could hold a dozen people. The whaleboat captain, called the umialik, became a figure of enormous importance. This title still carries weight in Arctic communities today.

The Punuk also developed warfare technology—bone armor and the bow and arrow—suggesting that as populations grew and whaling became more lucrative, conflict between groups increased.

The third stage, Birnirk, spread along coastal northern and western Alaska. Birnirk people used the same hunting technologies as their predecessors but had almost completely abandoned decorative art. Their tools were functional, unadorned. Why this happened remains unclear. Perhaps the energy once devoted to decoration went elsewhere. Perhaps religious or cultural practices changed in ways we cannot recover from the archaeological record.

The Great Migration East

Sometime around the year 1000, the Thule began moving east. This wasn't a single journey or a planned migration. It unfolded over generations, as family groups pushed further and further into territory that had been occupied for centuries by the Dorset people.

Why did they go?

The most compelling theory involves climate. Between roughly 900 and 1200, the Northern Hemisphere experienced what climatologists call the Medieval Warm Period. In the Arctic, this meant longer seasons of open water. Pack ice retreated. Channels that were normally choked with ice became navigable for more months of the year.

And crucially, the bowhead whales followed the warming waters eastward.

Bowhead whales are creatures of the ice edge. They feed on the tiny organisms that bloom where cold polar water meets warmer currents. But they fear entrapment—getting caught in ice that closes around them, leaving no escape to breathe. When the climate warmed and ice coverage decreased, bowheads expanded their range into the Beaufort Sea and the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The Thule followed their prey.

Other theories suggest that warfare in Alaska, or a desire to find new sources of iron for toolmaking, may have pushed people eastward. The Thule prized iron highly—they used it for knife blades and engraving tools—and sources were scarce. Some iron came from meteorites. Some came through trade networks that eventually connected to the Norse settlements in Greenland and their North American outposts.

Archaeologists have traced the migration routes by mapping where they find early Alaskan-style harpoon heads. One route followed the Beaufort Sea coast and Amundsen Gulf, then turned north through Parry Channel and Smith Sound into the High Arctic. A second route led south, along the western coast of Hudson Bay.

By the thirteenth century, Thule people had reached Greenland. Within a few hundred years, they occupied territory from the Mackenzie Delta in the west to Greenland in the east, from the High Arctic islands to the shores of Hudson Bay.

The Dorset Enigma

The people the Thule displaced—the Dorset culture—remain one of archaeology's great mysteries. The Dorset had lived in the central and eastern Arctic for centuries. They were skilled hunters of seals and other marine mammals. They created striking artwork, including small ivory carvings of humans and animals that suggest a rich spiritual life.

But the Dorset lacked certain technologies that the Thule possessed. They had no dogs, no dog sleds, no large boats for whale hunting. Their hunting range was limited to what a person could reach on foot or by small watercraft.

When the Thule arrived, the Dorset disappeared. This happened so quickly and so completely that it remains difficult to explain. There is little archaeological evidence of contact between the two peoples—few sites showing Dorset and Thule artifacts mixed together, few signs of trade or conflict.

Did the Thule kill them? Did they absorb them through intermarriage? Did the Dorset, outcompeted for resources by more technologically advanced newcomers, simply fade away as their populations collapsed?

A 2019 genetic analysis complicated the picture further. It showed that the ancestors of the Thule had emerged in Alaska thousands of years earlier through a mixing of Paleo-Eskimo peoples (the ancestors of the Dorset) and another group called the Ocean Bay Tradition. These mixed ancestors then migrated to Siberia, where they became the Old Bering Sea culture, before eventually returning to Alaska and beginning their expansion east.

In other words, the Thule and Dorset were distant cousins, separated by thousands of years of independent development. When they met again, one replaced the other entirely.

Contact with the Norse

The Thule expansion east coincided with the Norse expansion west. Vikings established settlements in Greenland around 985, and shortly afterward, Leif Erikson reached North America—the place they called Vinland. For several centuries, Norse Greenlanders made periodic voyages to North America for timber and other resources.

They encountered people there. The Norse called them Skrælingjar, a term that seems to have meant something like "wretches" or "weaklings"—not a flattering name. This term was applied both to the indigenous peoples of North America (likely ancestors of various First Nations groups) and to the people they met in Greenland and the far north (the Thule, and perhaps remnants of the Dorset).

The nature of these encounters ranged from trade to violence. Norse sagas describe both. Archaeological evidence shows that iron and other goods moved through trade networks connecting Norse and indigenous peoples.

For the Thule, the Norse may have been just another source of the iron they prized. They already had some iron from meteorites—Greenland is home to the Cape York meteorite, one of the largest ever found, which had been a source of iron for Arctic peoples for centuries. Norse iron would have been a valuable addition to their toolkit.

The Norse settlements in Greenland eventually failed. By the fifteenth century, they were gone—victims of climate change (the Little Ice Age made their farming way of life increasingly difficult), isolation from Europe, and perhaps conflict with the Thule. The Thule remained.

Technology of Survival

What made the Thule so successful in one of Earth's harshest environments?

Their technology was perfectly adapted to Arctic conditions. Consider the kayak: a small, enclosed boat made by stretching waterproofed sealskin over a frame of driftwood or bone. It was light enough for one person to carry, maneuverable enough to navigate through ice floes, and—crucially—designed so that if it capsized, a skilled paddler could roll it upright without getting out. A person in a kayak, wearing waterproof clothing, could hunt in conditions that would kill an unprotected human in minutes.

The umiak was larger, an open boat capable of carrying ten to fifteen people along with their gear. Umiaks were used for whale hunting, for moving entire families and their possessions during seasonal migrations, and for trade journeys that could cover hundreds of miles.

The dog sled transformed overland travel. A team of dogs could pull heavy loads across snow and ice at speeds no human could match. This extended the Thule hunting range dramatically. A hunter with dogs could travel far from the settlement, kill game, and return with meat that would have been impossible to carry on foot.

Their houses were engineering marvels of insulation. The semi-subterranean design took advantage of the earth's thermal mass—the ground, even frozen, is warmer than the Arctic air in winter. Entrance tunnels were built below the level of the main living space, creating a cold trap that kept frigid air from flowing into the dwelling. Inside, oil lamps burning seal blubber provided heat and light. A well-built Thule house could maintain habitable temperatures when it was forty or fifty degrees below zero outside.

Their hunting equipment showed remarkable sophistication. Harpoons were designed with toggling heads—the point would turn sideways once it penetrated an animal's flesh, making it nearly impossible to pull out. Float systems kept wounded prey at the surface. Snow goggles, carved from bone with narrow slits, prevented snow blindness. Specialized tools existed for every task: ulu knives for cutting meat and skins, blubber scrapers, needles and awls for sewing, mattocks for digging, snow shovels made from walrus shoulder blades.

The Little Ice Age and Its Aftermath

The same climate change that may have enabled the Thule expansion eventually brought it to an end.

Beginning around 1400, temperatures in the Arctic began to drop. This was the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling that would last until roughly 1850. Ice coverage increased. The open-water season shortened. Channels that had been navigable froze solid for more of the year.

The bowhead whales retreated to areas where open water persisted. In the High Arctic, whale hunting became increasingly difficult and eventually impossible. The great communal hunts that had sustained large Thule settlements could no longer take place.

The people adapted, as they always had. They relied more heavily on other resources: caribou, seals taken at breathing holes in the ice, fish. Settlements became smaller and more dispersed. The population that had concentrated in prime whaling areas spread out across the landscape.

By the sixteenth century, umiak and kayak whale hunting had ceased in the High Arctic. By 1600, the High Arctic was largely abandoned.

But the Thule did not disappear. They transformed into the regional groups that European explorers would encounter over the following centuries: the Copper Inuit of the central Arctic, the Netsilik of the area around King William Island, the Iglulingmiut of the Igloolik region, and many others. Each developed their own variations on the Thule way of life, adapted to local conditions and resources.

When European contact intensified in the eighteenth century, these peoples were called Eskimo—a term now considered offensive by many, possibly derived from a word in an Algonquian language meaning "eaters of raw meat" or possibly from a word meaning "snowshoe-netter." The people call themselves Inuit, which simply means "the people." (The singular is Inuk.) The related Yupik peoples of western Alaska and Siberia have their own names for themselves.

What the Thule Left Behind

The Thule tradition was first identified by Western archaeologists through the work of the Fifth Danish Expedition to Arctic America, which explored the Canadian Arctic between 1921 and 1924. Therkel Mathiassen, the expedition's archaeologist, excavated sites on Baffin Island and around Hudson Bay. He recognized that he was looking at the remains of a sophisticated whaling culture that had originated in Alaska and spread east roughly a thousand years earlier.

The name "Thule" comes from the location where some of the first archaeological remains were found: the settlement of Thule in northwest Greenland (now called Qaanaaq after being relocated in 1953). The name itself is much older—Thule was what ancient Greek and Roman geographers called the farthest north lands they knew of, a semi-mythical place at the edge of the world.

It's a fitting name for a people who made the edge of the world their home.

Today, the descendants of the Thule number in the hundreds of thousands. They live across a vast territory spanning Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. They have adapted, as their ancestors did, to changing conditions—now including the modern world with its technologies, its economic systems, and its renewed interest in the Arctic as climate change once again transforms the region.

The ice is melting. The Northwest Passage, frozen and impassable for most of recorded history, is increasingly open to shipping. Oil and mineral resources are becoming accessible. The Arctic, long ignored by the wider world, is becoming strategically important.

The Inuit are still there, as they have been for a thousand years. They are the people who conquered the Arctic, who developed technologies that no one else could match, who survived where survival seemed impossible. Whatever comes next, they have earned their place at the table where the Arctic's future will be decided.

After all, they were there first.