Bering Strait and Population Spread— Giddings 95 



sents no united front. They cherish their familial and other 

 group contacts and arrange to meet in groups at least once 

 within the span of a year. Under what circumstances can we 

 visualize residents of the northern forests as falling under any 

 population pressures that would force them to search for more 

 land? The individual moves within a fixed radius of space 

 within his lifetime. His children establish their own circles 

 of range beyond. But this is not migration! 



Finally, we must consider the possibility that something in 

 the biological nature of man causes him to seek warmer cli- 

 mates, as a sunflower faces the sun. It is obviously impractical 

 to attempt to investigate such an innate longing in the animal 

 himself. If we may judge by the developments of culture, how- 

 ever, there has been a tendency over a very long period every- 

 where for man to adapt himself to colder and colder climates. 

 This can be as readily seen as a desirable development as it can 

 as a makeshift arrangement based on necessity. Surely Europe 

 was not so populous in late Paleolithic and early Mesolithic 

 times that man could not support himself without pushing into 

 the Scandinavian peninsula. Nor would it have been difficult 

 for the Central Eskimos recently to have moved southward 

 into the forests, or even into the northern great plains, had they 

 so desired. Of course peoples in thinly populated areas live 

 where they do not because they are pushed there, nor may not 

 find land elsewhere, but because by tradition and cultural 

 adaptation they find their particular environment and locale 

 the ideal ones in all the universe. 



The coastal Eskimo does not move into the forest, even 

 though friendly Eskimos may live there, since he does not wish 

 to leave the excellent place that he believes is his on the coast. 

 He does not care to catch fish in traps under the winter river 

 ice as long as it is possible to hunt seal at the open leads. While 

 it is quite reasonable to suppose that a family might shift its 

 home many miles within its own environmental zone, it is diffi- 

 cult to understand how a migration could take place in any 

 such purposive way as to lead to warmer regions. 



It is clear from each of the preceding arguments that we 



