Tunlit (Dorset culture)

The Dorset culture (also called the Dorset Tradition) is a Paleo-Eskimo culture (500 BCE–1500 CE) that precedes the Inuit culture in Arctic North America.

It is named after Cape Dorset in Nunavut, Canada where the first evidence of its existence is found.

The culture has been defined as having four phases due to the distinct differences in the technologies relating to hunting and tool making.

Artifacts include distinctive triangular end-blades, soapstone lamps, and burins.The Dorset were first identified as a separate culture in 1925.

Archaeology has been critical to adding to knowledge about them because the Dorset were essentially extinct by 1500 due to difficulties in adapting to the Medieval Warm Period.

The Thule, who began migrating east from Alaska in the 1000s, began the displacement of the Dorset.

However a small, isolated community of people known as the Sadlermiut survived until 1902-1903 at Hudson Bay on Coats, Walrus, and Southampton islands.

DNA testing has confirmed these people were directly related to the Dorset culture.Inuit legends recount them driving away people they called the Tuniit (singular Tuniq) or Sivullirmiut (first Inhabitants).

According to legend, the First Inhabitants were "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit, but who were easily scared off.

Scholars now believe the Dorset and the later Thule people were the peoples encountered by the Norse who visited the area.

The Norse called these indigenous peoples skræling.

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