Evening star., 1938-06-27
OF STARS
MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Pro6ress
in Field, Laboratory
and Study.

in Field, Laboratory
and Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.
OTTAWA, June 27.-Excavation Of
two new village sites Of proto- Eskimos,
links to the tangled past Of the worlds
most mysterious people. was reported
here today.
Douglas Leechman OF the National
Museum OF Canada at Ottawa told
archeologists attending the sessions Of
the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science Of fnds on both
east and west sides of Hudson Strait
where, perhaps at about the time Of the
BIRTH Of Christ, there had been settle
ments Of Dorset people" who pre-
ceeded by centuries the present inhabi-
tants of the Far North.
The relics recovered Of Far North
culture, whose existence has been known
only for about a decade, consisted Of
artistically fashioned half-moon knives.
slender bone and ivory needles, and
small, Clipped harpoon heads. The COL
lection was strangely lacking in artifacts
common to the Eskimo culture Of the
present and its immediate predecessor
skin boats. probably dog sleds with the
exception of one possible runner. and
implements for whale killing.
The existence OF this ancient culture,
antedating the Eskimo machine age"
first was made known In 1925 by DR..
scum Of Canada. and since then there
has been an intensive search for more
evidence on the distribution and ways
- of k6. Eekivon
AS the picture now begins to develop
out OF the fog Of the past. 1t appears
as II the 10th century westward progress
OF the white men may have recapitu-
lated, on q larger scale, the ancient
eastern migrations Of the Eskimois stock
over the extreme northern North
America.
This jig-saw puzzle of the Far North's
lively by DR.. Jenness and his associates
as follows:
The ancestors Of the Eskimo, like those
Of the Indian, came originally from Asia
into Alaska.
were acclimated to the Arctic and may
even have been direct descendants Of
the ice age cave men OF Central Europe.
VINO ndU 1dlUWcU lClAOCCI ucIO6 Will
the retreating ice.
They were artists and gadget In.
ventors Of a high order. who set up
populous, fish-eating settlements on the
Alaskan coast and Bering Sea islands.
Bands Of adventurous pioneers, like
the bison hunters OF Americas wild
west days, moved eastward hunting
musk-ox and caribou In the desolate,
LII ~ o..
Davis Straight and the North Atlantic,
but they were not seafarers and went
no further.
Far from their cultured homeland
and forced TO take up new ways Of life,
these pioneers built up culture Of
their own which may have persisted for
several centuries.
Meanwhile in the Bering Sea region
the original colonies were constantly
encountering new cultural influences
from other Eskimoid people out Of 81
IBERIA and from the Indians. They
learned the arts Of seafaring and whale
hunting.
Then they also turned eastward in a
movement like that Of the settling of
the West after the Civil War. They
overran the old caribou and musk OK
hunters, sometimes destroying them and
sometimes living peacefully with them,
and penetrated to new :California"-
Greenland.
There 10 some evidence that they
barely beat the white man to this prom
ised land which Eric the Red then was
exploiting in Iceland as a place OF milk
and honey in one of the earliest and
most ambitious real estate promotion
schemes in history. Savages he en-
countered in 982 AID. may have been
among the first Of the Thule people,"
as the new pioneers now are known, to
reach the great Arctic subcontinent.
Thule habitation sites and artifacts,
dug up all along the Arctic coasts from
Point Barrow eastward are mingled
west Of Davis Strait, with evidences of
an older culture, similar to that OF the
two sites reported here today by Mr..
Leechman. The first find Of this sort
was at Cape Dorset. on the southwest
coast OF Bafiin Land. whence comes the
name Dorset people"
At some time before the coming of
the Thule people, there is reason to be-
lieve, there may have been q big In
dian eruption in Alaska and Northern
Canada, the Athabascan Indian group
pushing wedge between the caribou
hunters and their homeland. At the
same time the exploring Athabascans
may have pushed far to the southwark
into the American Southwest, where
they are now represented by the Nava-
jos. the worlds most rapidly increasing
people at a time when populations
elsewhere are mostly declining.
Stopped by the seas from moving
eastward, the Dorset pioneers spread
north and south. The first pure Dorset
sites were found in New Foundland and
Labrador. At the same period they
must have 1ntermingled, fought and
traded with the ancestors of the Algon-
quinian Indian peoples who at that time
were moving down the Atlantic coast
out Of their Far North homeland and
penetrated as far south as North Caro-
lima. These Algonquins, the people of
Powhatan and Pocahontas, like the
Thules in Greenland, did not long pre-
ceed the white men into Virginia and
Massachusetts,.
Their soapstone pots. such as Poca-
hontas mixed her beauty lotions in,
and their halfmoon shaped knives were
Dorset inventions. They, in turn gave
the proto- -Eskimos their characteristic
arrowheads.
History repeats itself in that the
Dorset men seem to have been the VIC
Tins Of an Eskimo machine age. They
were accomplished hand craftsmen, and
their chinned flint anH ebert imn1e-