For the Alaskan Inuit, however, a period of climatic warming and increased open water turned the Eastern Arctic into a tempting region in which to hunt and live. The Inuit brought with them from Alaska the tools and weapons of a sophisticated maritime hunting culture that had developed in the rich waters of the Bering Sea. Capable of hunting animals as large as the bowhead whale, the largest creature in the Arctic seas, the Inuit could support much larger communities than was possible for the Dorset people. The Inuit had little trouble expanding rapidly throughout the Arctic world, and as part of this process the Dorset way of life disappeared. The Dorset people vanish from the archaeological record at some time between about A.D. 1200 and 1500.
Nothing is told of their lust to kill.
Although the Dorset way of life disappeared from the Arctic, it is not certain that the Dorset people became extinct, leaving no trace of their physical or cultural heritage among the Inuit peoples who took their place across much of Arctic North America. If the society of the early Inuit was anything like that of their more recent descendants, then it seems very likely that some members of the Dorset population must have been incorporated as individuals into Inuit communities. Over the generations that the two groups were in contact, there must have been many occasions when a Tunit woman was persuaded, or stolen from her family, to become the wife of an Inuk, and when children were given or taken in adoption. Through such occurrences, the Palaeo-Eskimos must have contributed to the biological heritage of the Inuit population, and many of today's Inuit can probably trace a small proportion of their heredity to Tunit ancestors. Some elements of Dorset culture may also have survived among the Inuit.