thomas malloy wrote:
IMHO, a simpler explanation is that they were in Greenland during the wrong part of the 1600 year global heating and cooling cycle and froze to death.
The climate change helped do them in, but they were not killed by a single cold winter. The decline was gradual, over decades. There is extensive archaeological evidence for what happened. Some of it is heartbreaking. Diamond describes the remains of iron knives and other tools that were worn down to a nub, which in Europe would have been replaced. They could not make new knives, so they hung onto the shreds of their old tools until the bitter end, in an apocalyptic drama like the movie "Mad Max."
The Inuit came thousands of years before the Europeans, and they survived the cold. They are still there. If the Europeans had maintained their own shipbuilding technology, or alternatively if they had "gone native" and borrowed Inuit hunting and boatbuilding techniques, they would have survived.
There are many important lessons in the Diamond book. - Jed
