Thule (people)

The Thule were the ancestors of all modern Canadian Inuit. They arrived at Alaska in around 500 C.E and Nunavut, Canada in 1000 C.E. and a subgroup soon went even more easterly to Greenland. The link between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic. The Thule subsisted both on marine and terrestrial animals.

The Thule winter settlements had usually one to four houses with around ten people. Some major ones may had more than a dozen, although not all were inhabited simultaneously by the fifty residents there. Their houses were made of whale bones from summer. Other architectures have been discovered, such as kill sites, caches, and tent encampments.

Some Thule migrated southward, in the "Second Expansion" or "Second Phase". By the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Thule had occupied an area currently resided by Central Eskimo, and contacts with Europeans began and henceforward known as the Eskimo.

See also: Thule