Bering Strait and Population Spread— Giddings 99 



2. These hunters, with their family, or families, return year 

 after year to Big Diomede for seasonal hunting. 



3. Some members of this or a later generation establish 

 permanent homes on the island. 



4. The above processes are repeated towards the Alaska main- 

 land at Cape Prince of Wales. 



5. Now the American mainland has received its first perma- 

 nent population. The original settlers return often to Asia, 

 and explore the local land areas only so far as it is convenient 

 to extend a normal hunting and gathering range in terms of 

 their long-established cultural pattern for these activities. 



6. Second and third generations of these peoples remain 

 near the original settlement, because their traditions and social 

 activities are centered there, but their actual dwelling sites and 

 hunting ranges extend in wider circles both inland and along 

 the coast. 



7. With the normal increase of population of a group over 

 a period of many generations, separate bands have differenti- 

 ated, some placing more emphasis on the far-inland hunting 

 of caribou and salmon, others on coastal sealing. Their culture 

 contains, from Asia, the elements that make little or no inven- 

 tion necessary. A shift of emphasis in selecting elements from 

 their background suffices to differentiate a land-hunting group 

 from a sea-hunting group. 



8. With the passage of many generations, local bands de- 

 velop new traditions, new emphases, and exploit new terrain 

 and climatic zones. Since they are semi-nomadic hunters and 

 gatherers, their populations do not become dense, nor greatly 

 concentrated, and over many centuries and millennia their 

 normal increase of population extends into the other climatic 

 zones of America. The population controls of birth and death 

 manipulation, food scarcity, and feuding will operate in the 

 older areas, but need not restrict numbers near the outer 

 boundaries. 



9. The backward direction is the only one in which this 

 population spread is limited, for it is in that direction that 

 populations have developed a stability, and have erected tribal 

 boundaries. 



