74 Alaskan Science Conference 



relationship of populations can not be solved owing to the fact 

 that few of them were stratigraphically excavated. It appears 

 that the earliest people to enter this general area was a long- 

 headed Eskimo population, and there is abundant evidence 

 that this earlier population was superseded by a roundheaded 

 population which is found archaeologically and which is repre- 

 sented in the living populations of the Aleutians, Kodiak Island, 

 the Kuskokwim River and in Bristol Bay where studies of the 

 living have been made. There are indications that this expan- 

 sion of the broad and low vaulted Eskimos took place com- 

 paratively recently. At Umnak Island in the Aleutians they 

 appear to have arrived within the last few hundred years of a 

 total occupation span of about four thousand years and, as 

 previously mentioned, did not succeed in obliterating traces of 

 the former population in the islands to the west. The im- 

 portance of stratigraphically excavated skeletons can scarcely 

 be overemphasized. Once the skeletons of the earlier popula- 

 tion are mixed in those of the later population there is no cer- 

 tain way of sorting them out. Though both Paleo-Aleut and 

 Neo-Aleut skeletons are found in the late mummy caves of the 

 Aleutian Islands, their recognition would not have been pos- 

 sible unless it had been demonstrated that they corresponded 

 to two populations, one overlying the other in the excavated 

 village sites. 



One of the major results of the continued collection of strati- 

 graphically excavated skeletons will be not only the elucidation 

 of the direction and sequence of population movements in 

 southern Alaska, but also valuable data on the changes taking 

 place within populations. It has long been customary to look 

 for an outside origin for any newly appearing population in a 

 given area. The underlying assumption is the supposition that 

 evolution takes place somewhere else, and population differ- 

 ences are therefore explained by the invasion of a people from 

 some other area where studies have located a somewhat similar 

 people. Thus, Aleuts have been compared to Tungus, Apache 

 Indians and Japanese, but seldom to the neighboring Eskimos 

 of Bristol Bay for whom there are as yet few studies. Hrdlicka, 



