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Thule Indian Tribe: Environmental Study

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When looking at the Thule Indian tribe that is based in Northern Artic such as Baffin Island and Greenland locations we can see that weather would indeed play a huge part in their daily lives. Researchers understand that climatic changes in these areas influence the ecological conditions in not just land but also the sea animals that were available to the Native Americans (Schledermann, 1976 P: 37). Due to the sea –ice condition we ended up see that even the migratory habits, food availability, breeding, and even denning habitats change. This is mainly because land animals are often more sensitive to changes in the biotopes (Schledermann, 1976 P: 37). It is believed by some researchers that weather would have been warmer 800-1200 A.D …show more content…

We understand from our past week’s that many times when a group of people are hunting a larger or aggressive animal this would mean that the group as a whole would have to have some social complexity to allow them to work together to insure a successful hunting, this was also mentioned in another journal that I had located about the Thule people (96). The closets group to the Thule people that researchers could most likely get a glimpse of what their society would be like would be the Alaskan Eskimo whaling societies. It was seen that kinship was important to this whaling crew and when we looked at the winter villages it was not always kin-oriented local whaling families however, it was a mutually dependent sphere of interaction (Grier & Savelle, …show more content…

Another study that was mention within this article is the fact that the Thule sites were seen as almost a reflection of the group talked about above. They were more of organizational components. It was also noted that the early classic Thule winter villages that had an organized and surplus of producing bowhead whale or caribou based economies would have a relatively high degree of internal structure (Grier & Savelle, 1994P:96). It is clear that depending on the source of food a Thule village was focusing on would in fact change how the village would work together. When you saw a greater intensity of whaling there would be a greater labor cooperation that happens during the distribution of whales and whale products. This would then mean the greater of the labor cooperation would cause a greater degree of structured social interaction (Grier & Savelle, 1994P: 95). It is clear that this study does make perfect sense when you look at all the data. We understand the environment is a harsh place during the time periods talked about earlier in the paper, and we understand that missing a kill could mean death for a village. This would leave most villages with only one major choice when it came to how their society would interact. That choice would be to have a greater structured social interaction (Grier & Savelle, 1994P:95). One

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