Replies

Just a few weeks ago I noticed in a video about reindeer that they can run steadily at 35 MPH and in lengthy bursts of 50 MPH.

That's why the wolves can't eat them all.

Now, consider, reindeer herders can usually always catch and kill a reindeer. Not that it's all that easy, but some of these guys can just walk up to a herd eating peacefully, grab a reindeer, kill it and drag off the carcase without disturbing the others. Or, they send in a "pet reindeer" who brings back a friend who is then slaughtered.

Sometimes they have to chase them down from skis.

Obvious reindeer herders can travel immense distances quite rapidly.

So, what about Eskimos? Well, given their linguistic and genetic relationship to the Yakuts/Sakha people back in NE Siberia, I'd suspect they followed the same lifestyle some time in the distant past ~ and that would have been as reindeer herders and hunters.

These people also had domesticated dogs to assist them.

The question is really how fast could a bunch of Inuit Eskimos make it from roughly Bethel Alaska to just across from Baffin Island at York Greenland.

Taking 14 days to go 1000 miles, it seems to me a bunch of Eskimos could probably get there in under 2 months, and probably faster (using the Iditorod as a rough guide, but noting the Eskimos were probably much tougher than today's race entrants).

The Sa'ami and Norse were using skis in the 1200s (with the Sa'ami using them for thousands of years by that time). It's conceivable that the Alaskan Eskimos traveling to Greenland to get iron ALSO knew about skis.

With skis it's likely the Eskimo made it from Alaska to Greenland in just a few weeks ~ not several seasons.

With skis it's likely the Eskimo made it from Alaska to Greenland in just a few weeks ~ not several seasons.

"Not to worry, mates; we have all summer, ample seals to hunt and there are no brown bears on the ice."

Journey to Other Worlds explores, through over 200 objects of material culture and a magnificent collection of archival photographs, the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century lifeways of fourteen ethnographic groups distributed across Siberia. The regions of Siberia and the ethnic groups represented include western Siberia (Nenet, Khant, and Mansi), central Siberia (Sel'kup, Nganasan, Dolgan, Ket, and Evenk), and eastern Siberia (Yakut, Even, Koryak, Negidal, Chukchi, and Chuvantsy). The material culture and photographs illustrate the fabric of daily life of Siberian reindeer hunters and breeders and the interrelationships between environment, economy, domestic life, and spiritual life. The exhibit captures the spirit of the Siberian peoples in their various adaptations to the climatically harsh, arctic environments, which ranged from treeless tundra to mixed forest and tundra to the forested taiga. The essay by Valentina Gorbacheva provides an overview of the distribution and cultures of these groups.

SOURCE LINK

They didn’t use skis, but Kayaks.

If you know anything about the area, it’s a maritime culture, not a land culture.