Thule people

The Thule ( TOO-lee, also THOOL) or proto-Inuit were the precursors of all modern Inuit and Yupik peoples. They developed in coastal Alaska by 1000 CE and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture who had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule, now known as Pituffik (a settlement relocated and renamed Qaanaaq in 1953) in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. Evidence supports the idea that the Thule (and, to a lesser degree, the Dorset) were in contact with the Vikings, who had reached the shores of Canada in the 11th century as part of the Norse colonization of North America. In Viking sources, these peoples are called the Skrælingjar. Some Thule migrated southward, in the "Second Expansion" or "Second Phase". By the 13th or 14th century, the Thule had occupied an area inhabited until then by the Dorset, and by the 15th century, the Thule had replaced the Dorset. Intensified contacts with Europeans began in the 18th century. Compounded by the already disruptive effects of the "Little Ice Age" (1650–1850), the Thule communities broke apart, and the people became known as the Eskimo (a term now considered offensive), and later, Inuit and Yupik.