I read a few articles where some of these civilizations main focus was keeping warm because they were located so far north. So why would they not migrate more south?
In: 661
They did.
It’s less well known with native Americans but this is mostly seen in eurasia via the Mongols and other central Asian peoples.
They developed to live in harsh steppe terrain that was unsuitable for civilization….
And frequently spilled out of this terrain to raid the richer and more fertile civilized lands.
By their very nature however their numbers were lesser and the way of life in the fertile lands was seen as more prestigious so via migrating they changed and were assimilated.
This would have happened with native American groups from harsh terrain such as the Inuit with groups that lived in more fertile terrain – they did raid southwards. But if they were succesful then they would stop being fringe people and change.
I see many interesting answers.
I think maybe they were forced by other civilizations to keep there, like actual migrants that are not welcomed.
Other fact might be that they were scared to leave their area due to ignorance, rival tribes and superstition, like the monsters in the border of the ocean that keep Europeans in their continent until about 1500.
I am trying to figure this out right now. I can not imagine living like this and getting a mechanical injury(broke bone), blown back, infection, fever, etc. or imagine giving birth in a tent when it’s -40 outside.
I was thinking how hard it would had been to migrate further south.
Living in the north was what they understood. No need to make a risky journey far south to a place you might not know how to survive in when you are surviving in the area you and your ancestors inhabited. Also, like today, culture plays a part, and people won’t just up and leave even rather harsh areas if that’s where they were born and what they know.
Also, some did move south. Look at the Navajo, they came to the Southwest relatively recently from the far north, the other languages in their language family are found in the arctic parts of Canada. But at no point would all the people in all parts of the north have a need to simultaneously move away.
People already lived to the south, so they would have to fight them and take their land. They probably saw it as safer to remain where they are in the culture they were adapted to.
America wasn’t a peaceful shangrila before Europeans came. It was full of wars just like everywhere else. Wars for territory or resources or women etc.
People spread out to find their own territory. Inuit people moved far north as a defence against others who didn’t want to go far north.
TIL that the Thule Society is a German occultist society founded shortly after WW1, the foundations of the Nazi party.
Maybe some food for thought is the fact that early researchers visiting Inuit populations were told that they had never known that other people existed elsewhere. Also, at least for other Arctic populations, they stick to ancient migration routes, so there would be no need to go elsewhere. There is also the possibility that they just really love their lifestyle in the snow!
I accidentally deleted my response that I first posted yesterday so I’ll repost what I basically answered. I’ve added a bit more info just because this question relates specifically to my expertise and it’s hard not to nerd out about it.
In short, the premise of the question assumes that living in more temperate regions is inherently easier and that Arctic regions is harder/harsher. I don’t agree with it so let me explain why.
First and foremost, the Palaeo-Inuit (Pre-Dorset, Saqqaq, Independence I, and Dorset) as well as the Inuit (“Thule” is a somewhat outdated term for the pre-contact Inuit groups) are highly specialized to live and thrive in the Arctic. By the time humans arrived in the North American Arctic (probably around or just before 5000 BP), they were already highly specialized to live in Arctic environments. For the Palaeo-Inuit and Inuit, the Arctic is familiar and home. While there were not large sedentary cities in the Arctic that supported millions of people, the peoples of the Arctic thrived in the Arctic for thousands of years up until today (since people still live successfully in the Arctic).
Migrating to more temperate regions would require them to shift/adapt their subsistence strategies, systems of exchange, and ways of life fairly drastically. The subarctic and Boreal forest are potentially just as harsh for Arctic-adapted peoples as the Arctic is for subarctic peoples. So part of it is that migrating south doesn’t really make living easier and why would they when they are successful in their own niche.
If we want to get real nerdy for a second and think about hunter-gatherer storage and surplus strategies, the BIG example of this being stretched to an incredible level in North America is the Pacific coast peoples of what is now BC, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. These places had fairly large villages with big time evidence of food storage and sedentism. When you really drill down to it, the Arctic is VERY similar to this (especially in Inuit contexts). We can pick apart this statement with counter-examples about how it’s different but the broad stroke strategies used in one area is common in the other (although this manifested itself somewhat differently in terms of scale, culture, and ways of life). This tells us very explicitly that the Arctic, despite its reputation among southerners as being harsh and awful, was actually an environment of great abundance if you are properly equipped/prepared for dealing with it and living there. Although, obviously, at a very different scale than the Pacific coast.
The second issue is that, in many cases, there were people already living in the regions directly south of the Arctic for the vast majority of the time that Palaeo-Inuit and Inuit occupied the Arctic. While it’s not impossible, it’s really uncommon for people of one group to migrate into the territory/region of another (even if the Arctic peoples wanted to do that). In some cases when this does happen, you have groups mix along those borders (uncommon in most Arctic contexts) or have other forms of conflict (which is not uncommon in the case of the Inuit and First Nations groups in Canada and Alaska). This means that, unless some new information comes to light, we can assume that there was little attempt by Arctic people to move into more southerly regions (although clearly they did in a few, specific cases).
The big exception to this basic tenet of staying in the north is in the case of the east coast (i.e. Labrador) where you have ample evidence of Arctic peoples migrating further south. For example, the Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Inuit all migrated fairly far south with the Dorset having a significant presence in Newfoundland (with some fairly large sedentary villages like Phillip’s Garden). There’s even emerging evidence that the Inuit, at least seasonally, visited northern Newfoundland in the 17th to 19th ish centuries. This is fairly far south and is definitely south of the tree line.
The reason why these Arctic peoples did/could do this is because the northeast coast is basically a specrum of the same environment going from the fairly cold northern regions of Ellesmere Island to the much more temperate, wooded areas of Newfoundland. You largely have similar animals, coastal geographies, and plants throughout this whole region. So the tools/skills/experience needed to live in one area are very transferable to others along the Labrador coast. Likewise, this coast had a much more sporadic history of human occupation which might itself have supported migrations from the Arctic down south. On the flip side, ancestral First Nations groups (e.g. Maritime Archaic and Intermediate and Recent Period groups) migrated fairly far north and there’s good evidence of Maritime Archaic and Pre-Dorset co-occupation of some areas of northern Labrador, such as Ramah Bay.
This is obviously a massive generalization and I could definitely talk for hours about each paragraph but it gives a good general gist as to why Arctic peoples only rarely decided to migrate south and why this might not necessarily provide the benefit that many southern/agricultural people (like most Canadians/Americans/Europeans etc.) might think.
Your assuming that thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago people were aware that as you went south the climate was warmer. How would they know that? For all intensive purposes they probably assumed the world was all the same. I mean it’s not like they had a newspaper or radio to give them weather reports…..unless they encountered a traveller from another warmer part of the world it’s very unlikely they even knew such places existed…
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