NO. 14 PREHISTORIC ART OF ALASKAN ESKIMO COLLINS 45 



to the already highly developed Bering Sea culture. The Bering Sea 

 culture appears without doubt to be the older culture. The Thule cul- 

 ture originated as a direct outgrowth from the other and whatever 

 traits it may in turn have disseminated to the westward were late and 

 had nothing to do with the origin of the Bering Sea culture as a whole. 



Jenness speaks of a definite Thule stage in Alaska but also regards 

 it as relatively late : " The writer may hazard an opinion, based, it is 

 true, on evidence not altogether sufficient, that there were Eskimos 

 living south of Bering Strait before the Thule culture estabhshed it- 

 self in Arctic Alaska whose culture attained a level as high as. or 

 higher than, any known today and whose influence reached as far 

 to the north as Point Barrow." * 



We have seen that Mathiassen in his Thule report recognized that 

 the Thule culture was derived from Alaska. In his later publication, 

 however, he discusses the relation between the Thule culture and the 

 ancient culture represented at Birnirk, near Point Barrow, and con- 

 cludes that the former is the more ancient : " Are the Birnirk or the 

 Thule harpoon heads the older ? . . . . The simple shape and the geo- 

 graphic distribution speak in favor of the Thule heads being the older, 

 the side blades (found only as remnants on Thule heads) and partly 

 the patination speak in favor of the Birnirk heads.'" The range of the 

 Thule harpoon heads is then discussed and the following statement is 

 made : " This seems to indicate that at a certain period these harpoon- 

 heads were in use from East Siberia to Greenland. But in northern 

 Alaska this continuous chain was broken and the Birnirk heads took 

 their place ; the Van Valin collection is from a period very close to the 

 time this change occurred ; later on we have the development indicated 

 by the names Birnirk — Cape Smythe — Point Barrow, until we reach 

 the recent culture stage. If the pure Thule culture has to be included 

 in this chain it must be as the oldest link. Thus the Thule harpoon- 

 heads must be older than the Birnirk heads." ^ 



As to the first statement, that " the simple shape and the geographic 

 distribution speak in favor of the Thule heads being the older," it 

 seems to me that recent archeological discoveries in the North show 

 above all else that the sequences that can as yet be traced in Eskimo 

 culture have been in the line of simplification or even degeneration 

 (especially in regard to art) and not of the development of simple into 

 more complex forms. The further back Eskimo culture is traced the 

 more intensified and complex it is seen to become. This observed 



^Amer. Geogr. Soc, Special Publ. No. 7, pp. 170-171. 

 =* Indian Notes, Vol. 6, No. i, p. 52. 

 ^ Indian Notes, Vol. 6, No. i, p. 54. 



