Empire · 1000–1600 · Northern North America

Thule culture

Also known as Thule

The Thule people, ancestors of today's Inuit, developed in coastal Alaska around 1000 CE. Using sophisticated technology, including large skin boats called umiaks, kayaks, toggling harpoons, dog sleds and snow houses, they hunted bowhead whales, seals and walrus.

From about 1200, perhaps encouraged by warmer conditions and the search for iron and new hunting grounds, they spread rapidly eastward across Arctic Canada to Greenland in just a few generations, replacing the earlier Dorset people. In Greenland they met Norse settlers, whose colonies later vanished. Thule communities were small and mobile, without states or kings, but linked by trade networks stretching thousands of kilometres. As the Little Ice Age cooled the Arctic after about 1400, whaling declined and Thule culture evolved into the regional Inuit cultures met by Europeans.

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Years

1000–1600

Capital

None; small seasonal villages across the Arctic

Greatest extent

1300, about 2.30 million km²

Region

Northern North America

From Alaska across Arctic Canada to Greenland (rough estimate)