ioo Alaskan Science Conference 



10. At Bering Strait itself there is a continuous moving back 

 and forth of the related peoples, but no migration. Nor is there 

 likely ever to be a movement of foreign peoples across the 

 Strait in mass, so long as the original, culturally adapted popu- 

 lation is not decimated in some unlikely way. 



11. Ideas and devices diffuse freely across Bering Strait at 

 all later times, but equally in both directions. Although short- 

 term hostilities may create temporary barriers that dam up the 

 stream of diffusion, the resulting ponds of difference break 

 locally, and trading of ideas and goods is resumed. 



12. Although there are few generations, or close series of 

 generations, for which there is violent cultural change, the 

 people of Bering Strait are constantly altering their culture 

 through diffusion. Their physique changes also, through free 

 draft upon the genetic pool of their greater cultural area (and 

 through the operation of "genetic drift" as a random element 

 of small population change). Their language modifies through 

 slow innovation. 



13. Although we might not have associated the original 

 families with the term "Eskimo" to any appreciable extent, the 

 direction of change is continuously towards that ideal. 



It is to be noted that in this view there is no room for vio- 

 lent change, nor for migrations, nor for the funneling into 

 America of whole peoples who bring with them the character- 

 istics now found in isolated parts of the two Americas. Such 

 differences are explained by diffusion and invention working 

 together, and by rearrangements of the genetic pool locally into 

 varieties of physical norms. If there is no particular reason for 

 the people of Bering Strait to look alike from one millennium 

 to another, drawing freely as they may upon genetic combina- 

 tions from both Asia and America, there is similarly no reason 

 for all of the culturally differentiating groups farther to the 

 south to cling to the physical prototype of the first arrivals on 

 American soil. 



Perhaps the most important premise in this highly specu- 

 lative approach is the discounting of real migration of hordes, 

 and any of the other unilinear theoretical explanations of the 



