NO. 14 PREHISTORIC ART OF ALASKAN ESKIMO COLLINS 47 



only resulted in showing that we must go much further back before 

 that origin is revealed. 



The earlier stages leading up to the old Bering Sea culture are as 

 yet unknown ; to bring these to light is the most important immediate 

 task that awaits archeological research in the Arctic. Hrdlicka and 

 Jenness, whose researches in 1926 brought to light the first definite 

 evidences of this ancient Eskimo culture, are inclined to look toward 

 Siberia as the most likely place of its origin. Jenness says : " We 

 seem justified, therefore, in concluding that the shores and islands of 

 Bering Sea were at one time the home of a distinct and highly devel- 

 oped Eskimo culture, a culture marked by special types of harpoon- 

 heads and other objects that in many cases show the most skilful 

 workmanship, marked too by a very original art, partly geometrical 

 and partly realistic, that suggests in some of its features contact with 

 the Indians of the northwest coast of America, although its roots more 

 probably lie in northeastern Asia." * 



While it is too early yet to speak with any assurance on this im- 

 portant point, the evidence at hand attests the reasonableness of such 

 a view. The close relation which has always been recognized between 

 the St. Lawrence Island Eskimo and those of northeast Siberia is seen 

 to have extended far back into the past. St. Lawrence Island, due 

 perhaps to peculiarly favorable environmental conditions, was cer- 

 tainly one of the principal centers at which this old culture flourished, 

 although from the scanty knowledge we have of the archeology of the 

 Alaskan Arctic coast it seems that an equally high development may 

 have taken place around Point Hope. The still more fragmentary 

 data available from northeast Siberia show that the old Eskimo culture 

 existed there also, not only within the restricted area occupied by the 

 present Asiatic Eskimo, but far beyond this, even to the Kolyma 

 River. The enormous and practically unknown stretch of coast from 

 Indian Point northward to East Cape and thence westward to the 

 Kolyma seems the most likely region in which to search for the be- 

 ginnings of the ancient Bering Sea culture, which in its later stages 

 produced in Alaska an Eskimo culture of unparalleled richness, gave 

 rise to the highest Eskimo culture of the eastern regions, the Thule 

 culture, and formed the basis of the existing culture of the Eskimo 

 of Alaska and Siberia. 



I 



*Ann, Rep. for 1926, Nat. Mus. Canada, p. 78. 



