Video- "How To Build An Igloo" (Inuit) + Thoughts On N.E. Stone Structures= "Related"
The Ice and Snow constructions, or igloos of Native people far north in the Arctic follows the same "modus operandi" of particular stone constructions in the more temperate Northeast region of the US/ Canada. In place of stone the resource they use is ice in this case, which is a less permanent material than stone. For instance, just as many people compare the Ohio and Mississippi Earthworks, spirals and mounds to the Stone constructions in the Northeast we can also compare stone constructions to the ice constructions of the Arctic. The following 10 minute video shows the building methods of a 'beehive' igloo and the shaping of the ice blocks that goes into it:
"How to Build An Igloo" -
Similar building style to at least some of the stone structures of the Northeast (while other stone structures have their counterparts still in the Arctic inuksuk and other such rock piles.)
However some questions need to be raised- did Arctic people have a prior knowledge to stone building when stone was a more abundant resource in that region, or did the shaping and fitting of ice blocks develop independently? For example, the fitting and shaping of ice blocks is very similar to the shaping and fitting of stones- many of the more elaborate stone structures in the Northeast have shaped and fitted stones similar to the ice blocks shown in the above video.
And also, going back to the book "Manitou" by Mavor and Dix; on page 17 they talk about an excavation they did of a stone site in Vermont and found that the tradition of building stone piles directly on top of the bedrock and that the modification by human hands of the bedrock itself happened at least directly after the recession of the last glacial ice (10,000-12,000 yrs. ago) or that it was perhaps from an even earlier period of an interglacial period BEFORE the last glaciation (before the ice age). This was determined from soil-core samples they had geologists test.
An interesting point to make here is that there wouldn't have been trees around to use as a resource 11,000 (or so) years ago directly after the last ice age- the resource to use would have been stone. So at least some of the stone chambers, mounds and stone walls of the Northeast region can be dated to this time frame (and excavations of the Red Paint People stone constructions goes back at least 9,000 years- such as the Stone burial mound in Labrador that featured a collapsed Chamber.) Stone, wood, earth or ice, some of the building methods and the logic behind it are the same. It just depends on what resource is available.
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