THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE ESKIMO — COLLINS 439 



Further information will be needed, particularly on the archeology 

 of the vast region between Lake Baikal and the Pacific and Arctic 

 Oceans, before the postulated Siberian-Eskimo relationships can be 

 fully understood. Okladnikov's investigations alone, however, sus- 

 tain to a remarkable degree Hatt's view of the origin of Eskimo 

 culture and of the development of culture generally in northern 

 Eurasia and America. Hatt's theory, which was based originally on 

 an exhaustive study of clothing types, postulated the existence of two 

 great culture waves or strata in northern Eurasia and America. The 

 older stratum, which Hatt called the "coast culture," originally occu- 

 pied the inland waterways and later the coasts of northern Eurasia. 

 Spreading eastward it established itself on the Bering Sea and Arctic 

 coasts of America where it developed into the Eskimo culture as known 

 today. The younger wave or stratum, called the "inland culture," 

 was most typically represented by such peoples as the nomadic 

 Tungusians of central Asia, whose possession of the snowshoe enabled 

 them to expand over the vast inland plains and woodlands. 



Okladnikov's excavations in the Baikal region afford tangible evi- 

 dence of a cultural development very much as envisaged by Hatt — an 

 early population of hunters and fishers who lived a settled life along 

 the lakes and rivers before these territories were taken over by the 

 reindeer-breeding nomads. And, as we have seen, the material equip- 

 ment of these early Neolithic peoples was basically similar to that of 

 the oldest Eskimos in Alaska. 



The role of the Lake Baikal Neolithic in the formation of Eskimo 

 culture has been emphasized because this is the particular Neolithic 

 setting for which sequential stages have been most fully revealed and 

 in which Eskimo affinities are most apparent. There were, of course, 

 other Neolithic centers in the inland zones of Eurasia that may have 

 contributed to the development of the coast cultures from which Eski- 

 mo culture sprang. Neolithic sites are known from one end of Si- 

 beria to the other, and some of them, for example, cave sites on the 

 east slope of the Ural Mountains (Tolmachev, 1913), have yielded 

 culture remains closely resembling those of the Baikal region. 



The exact nature of the relationship between the European Meso- 

 lithic and the early Siberian Neolithic is yet to be determined. It 

 will depend in part upon another uncertain factor — the role of the 

 Siberian Paleolithic in the formation of later stages of culture in 

 Eurasia. The Upper Paleolithic cultures of central Asia differed in 

 many respects from those of western Europe, and their influences 

 appear to have extended even to the oldest cultures of Scandinavia 

 (Gjessing, 1944). However, we need not be concerned here with the 

 nature of the relationship or the direction of culture flow between 

 the European and Siberian Paleolithic, the Mesolithic of northern 



922758—51 29 



