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Post by Stephen on Jan 14, 2005 23:52:35 GMT
The Skraeling moulds are Mohawk Indians? I'm fairly sure the Mohawks weren't around until the 1600 or 1700's. Most likely the Skraelings that the Vikings encountered were Inuit (i.e. Eskemo). The current Skrealings seems a bit stereotypical.
Stephen
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Post by Prince August on Jan 17, 2005 9:45:58 GMT
The Skraeling moulds are Mohawk Indians? I'm fairly sure the Mohawks weren't around until the 1600 or 1700's. Most likely the Skraelings that the Vikings encountered were Inuit (i.e. Eskemo). The current Skrealings seems a bit stereotypical. Stephen There is likely a group of Indian tribes that were called 'skraelings' by the vikings. While the Indians we made are a bit generic, they are that way because the accounts are a bit vague. Chris did as much research into the area as he could and we wanted to make Indians that looked as 'Classical Indian' as possible. They used primitive stone axes and spears, were hunters and fishermen. The Vikings considered any Indian they encountered to be 'Skraeling' so while you could be right about the Inuit, they were not the only Indians they came accross. I did some research: www.native-languages.org/beothuk.htmThese beothuk are now extinct, but they were called Skraelings by Vikings who killed as many of them as they could.
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Post by Stephen on Jan 17, 2005 22:16:51 GMT
I'm not sure I'd trust that any modern tribe formed the Skraelings. Most of the "modern" tribes of the 1600-1700 were formed from remnants of Native American goups that had been decimated by small pocks.
Prior to around 1500 their were a number of advanced Native-American city states in North America (I'm not sure about the northeast coast in, I think the early woodland period, I know that the Indians in that area were deep sea fishing but I'm not sure about settelment densities). In historical tribes most of the northeastern tribes were agricultural (supplementing with hunting and fishing). To go a bit farther south prior to the Spanish conquest what is now modern day Mexico City had a population of (if I'm remembering correctly) five million, making it the largest city in the world.
While Native American's did use stone tools we are talking about VERY advanced stonework. Some of the hunting points were "primitive" in that they were quickly produced. A spear thrower can put a six foot spear half way (i.e. three feet) through a six inch diameter tree.l Honestly unless you're hunting big game there's no reason to spend hours banging out a good point, it's only going to get broken.
Stephen Who's letting his undergrad in Anthropology show
P.s. do a web search for Chahokia and remember that when DeSotto went up the Mississippi he didn't find the city particularly big.
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