Evening star., 1937-09-18
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress in Field,
Laboratory and Study.
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS X. HENRY.

Where did the Eskimo come from?
Practically hemmed in by the Arctic
Circle from the dawn OF history, the
worlds most isolated and mysterious
people constitute an outstanding puzzle
to anthropology. A long step toward
the solution of this puzzle has just been
taken with the just-issued report of
Henry B. Collins, jr., Smithsonian Insti-
tuition anthropologist, on his excavations
of the oldest known Eskimo sites on st.
Lawrence Island in Bering Sea.
In language, mythology, ways of life
and material culture the Eskimo differs
widely from the rest of the human race
The characteristic culture in its simplest
known form is that of the so-called
Caribou Eskimo who lives along the shores
of Arctic North America and around
Hudson Bay. This has led some
ethnologists to maintain that the Hudson
Bay region is the cradle of the Eskimo
race, from which various offShoOts have
branched out to the west and to Green
land. The present-day culture of the
Alaskan Eskimos is richer than that of
the Caribous, and, specifically con-
Sidered, there has seemed to be normal
gradiant between the two in the So
called Thule culture of Arctic Canada
between the two.
Were it not for this curious pattern
the normal assumption would have been
that the people of the Arctic were de-
scendants of Mongoloid stock which
originally came from Northeastern Asia,
settled down in Alaska and the Bering
Sea islands, and gradually dispersed over
the whole region. But it is somewhat in
contradiction to historical law that a
culture should move from the more to
the less elaborate.
BY intensive study Of the numerous
artifacts found on st. Lawrence Island
and comparison of them with those of
the other Eskimo culture groups Mr..
Collins is able to bring some order into
this tangled and contradictory anthro-
biological pattern. He strongly chal-
lenges the assumption of Hudson Bay
homeland for the Eskimo.
The Eskimo, he finds, seems actually
to have moved from the more to the less
elaborate culturally. His excavations on
st. Lawrence Island seem to represent
a very early stage in the history of the
race on the North American continent
and at the same time the highest point
reached by Eskimo culture, which pro-
ceeded to break down In various direc-
tions.
This still leaves unsolved the enigma
OF where the Eskimo came from, but, Mr..
Collins concludes, there can be no doubt
as to the general direction in which we
must turn in seeking it's origin. This is
Northern Eurasia, the region in which
we find numerous striking parallels to
Eskimo culture and the only region
where we find on the one hand the geo.
graphical conditions essential to the
establishment of settled maritime cul-
ture based on the hunting of sea man.
mails and on the other hand, either ex-
listing today or having existed in former
times, such basic elements as the square,
wooden, earth-covered house, skin boats,
sledges and toboggans, the harpoon with
toggle head, throwing board and bird
dart, lamps, pottery vessels, Clipped
stone and rubbed slate implements.
These elements are found widely dis
tributed throughout Northern Eurasia
and we may assume that they formed
part Of the culture of those first peoples
who followed the rivers to the Arctic
coasts and who somewhere between
Bering Strait and the Kara Sea de-
veloped a culture which embodied the
general features of Eskimo culture as
we know it In its earliest western form.
AS to the immediate origin, the present