42 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8l 



harpoon head represented on St. Lawrence Island as well as on the 

 Arctic coast of Alaska. The occurrence of the Birnirk type in practi- 

 cal isolation at the ancient sites around Point Barrow would seem to 

 favor the view that these sites were older than the St. Lawrence sites 

 where the type is associated with other forms. This cannot be stated 

 with any degree of certainty, however, until it is possible to make 

 more comprehensive comparisons between the material from the 

 several sites. 



To the east of Alaska, in Northern Canada, Baffin Land and Green- 

 land, are found the ruined settlements of Eskimo who preceded those 

 occupying the same regions today and whose culture has been so 

 thoroughly described by Mathiassen. The ancient culture represented 

 at these sites he has designated as Thule, from the locality in north- 

 western Greenland where it was first found. Concerning the origin 

 of the Thule culture and its relation to other Eskimo groups, 

 Mathiassen makes the following statement : 



When going through the elements of the Thule culture we have time after 

 time had occasion to observe the close connection which apparently exists be- 

 tween the Central Eskimo Thule finds and certain groups of Western Eskimos, 

 especially their most Arctic sub-groups at Pt. Barrow and East Siberia. That in 

 former times there has here been a very close and intimate connection cannot be 

 doubted. The question is then merely whether the migration has proceeded from 

 the central regions towards the west or vice versa, whether the Thule culture 

 has originated in the central regions or the western regions. As has already 

 been stated, the Alaska culture has, in many respects, remained at a more 

 primitive, more original stage than the culture in the central and eastern 

 Eskimo regions. Now the question is whether in the time of the Thule culture 



too it did this or whether the opposite is the case In the Central Eskimo 



finds there are elements the prototypes of which we only know from the 

 western regions and which consequently must have come from there ; thus 

 these are types which must have developed in the west from earlier forms 

 and which have only wandered eastwards in their later form, where we now 



find them in the Thule culture We must therefore imagine that the 



Thule culture, with all its peculiar whaling culture, has originated somewhere 

 in the western regions, in an Arctic area where whales were plentiful and wood 

 abundant, and we are involuntarily led towards the coasts of Alaska and East 

 Siberia north of Bering Strait, the regions to which we have time after time 

 had to turn in order to find parallels to types from the Central Eskimo finds. 

 There all the conditions have been present for the originating of such a culture, 

 and from there it has spread eastwards right to Greenland, seeking everywhere 

 to adapt itself to the local geographical conditions. And it can hardly have 

 been a culture wave alone ; it must have been a migration.^ 



The evidence that leads Mathiassen to this view is, I believe, clear 

 and convincing, and there can be no doubt that the interpretation 

 advanced is in the main correct. 



^ Archeology of the Central Eskimo, \' ol. II, pp. 183-184. 



