440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



Europe, and the Lake Baikal Neolithic. Important as these ques- 

 tions are, they are not within the scope of the present paper which 

 is concerned only with cultural analogies of immediate and demon- 

 strable significance in connection with Eskimo origins. 



If our interpretation of the evidence is correct, the Eskimos be- 

 come the first American people whose cultural origins, on the basis of 

 actual archeological comparisons, can be traced to a specific time and 

 place in the Old World. The postulated place of origin is thousands 

 of miles to the west of the present Eskimo territory, and the time 

 thousands of years in the past. How is this to be reconciled with 

 the generally accepted view that the Eskimos were among the last 

 of the Asiatic peoples to enter the American Continent, and par- 

 ticularly with the fact that the Eskimo culture exhibiting the 

 closest Mesolithic-Neolithic affinities — the Ipiutak — had already been 

 strongly influenced by late iron-age cultures of Siberia? Whether 

 the theory that the Eskimos were late comers is still tenable in the 

 light of recent archeological discoveries is something we will discuss 

 later. However, assuming that it is, we would have a reasonable 

 explanation of the seeming paradox in the phenomena of culture 

 lag and culture stability in a marginal area. The taiga and tundra 

 zones of central and northern Siberia formed a refuge area where 

 basic culture patterns changed very slowly and at any given time 

 in the past stood at an earlier stage of development than in adja- 

 cent regions to the south. In the relative isolation of the Arctic small 

 groups of hunters and fishers who had moved north in Mesolithic- 

 Neolitliic times, and who later came to feel the impact of iron- 

 age culture, perpetuated a basic pattern of life that had long since dis- 

 appeared in the south. Thus there would be no real anachronism 

 involved in the assumption that the oldest known Eskimos in Alaska 

 and their immediate ancestors in northern Eurasia had continued a 

 Mesolithic-Neolithic way of life, particularly in their subsistence 

 activities and techniques, even though they lived in iron-age times 

 and had absorbed features of iron-age culture. 



PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 



Anthropologists and anatomists by the score have speculated on 

 the problem of Eskimo origins and have expressed widely differing 

 opinions, none of which has provided a satisfactory answer as to when 

 and where the Eskimo race type arose. Even today, with the wealth 

 of new information we have on the development of Eskimo culture, 

 we are still unable to speak with assurance on the origin and affinities 

 of the Eskimo race. The physical type associated with one of the 

 oldest Eskimo cultures, the Dorset, is unknown, and the skeletons 

 found at Ipiutak are still undescribed. We are likewise handicapped. 



