PEOPLE MOVING AND IDEAS NOT MOVING.

PEOPLE MOVING AND IDEAS NOT MOVING. I posted here on how DNA studies in the British Isles are showing that “Ideas moved. People less so.” To quote James Marshall, linked in the previous post, “The peoples of Great Britain and Ireland, like most of their cousins in Scandinavia, Spain, and the nearby continent, are descended largely from Palaeolithic hunters and gatherers. The subsequent changes in the material culture … the use of metals and agriculture … were therefore adopted by local people. Ideas moved. People less so. This is contrary to what had been assumed, or idealized, through most of the last few centuries of European historical speculation.” This article (link via Instapundit) proposes an answer to the mystery of why the medieval Nordic settlements in Greenland disappeared. The Norse settled Greenland about 1000 A.D. By 1450 A.D., they were gone. The article argues that they simply moved because of the onset of the Little Ice Age, which lasted 1300 to 1850. The Inuits in northern Greenland had a culture better suited to the colder climate. The Norse did not intermarry with the Inuits. They did not adopt the Inuit culture, which used harpoons and kayaks. There was no apocalyptic event. They just moved away as it got colder.