62 H. P. STEENSBY. 
attempt must be made, by comparing the results gained hereby, to 
form a picture of the development. 
Here a purely anthropogeographical problem is in question, in that 
we understand by anthropogeography the study of the geographical 
factors to which the culture has adjusted itself, and on which its 
existence is dependent. It is a well known fact that the geographical 
factors, or such circumstances, as, for example, the distribution of 
land and water, the form of the coasts, the conditions of ice, rivers 
and lakes, climate, and flora and fauna have a determining effect on 
human culture above all on the underlying economic culture, and 
nextly on the higher and more complex conditions of culture, such 
as the community, the family etc. FRIEDRICH RATZEL was the first 
to bring all these subjects under a general view, and he created the 
term anthropogeography for that branch of the science. 
Most authors are still content, however, to present the adaptation 
of culture to nature in its general features. We, however, must 
proceed in a more exact manner, and must divide the Eskimo 
domain into ıts individual geographical provinces, or into the natural 
geographical individualities, 1. e., the smaller domains where the 
geographical factors must be regarded as homogeneous, and we must 
then find and present the typical stamp of the economic culture in 
each of these latter domains. This done, we shall try whether it is 
possible by comparing all these nuances in the Eskimo economic 
culture to ascertain which of them is the oldest. 
In many respects the Eskimo territory is extraordinarily well 
adapted to be the subject of such anthropogeographical treatment, 
as, on account of its lengthiness and its alternations as regards the 
position of the coast, the geological structure of this, and the con- 
dition of ice, it is relatively easily divided into individual sections 
with natural borders. In the next place an otherwise so encroaching 
factor as the flora may be almost entirely excluded from these reflec- 
tions, because the alimentation of plants plays only a slight but 
somewhat variable rôle with all groups, and wood, as material, 
must almost always be procured by special means (in the first place 
from drift-wood). Finally, as a result of the geographical peculiarity, 
consequent to the northern latitudes, that the animals are few in 
species but abundant in individual numbers, the only important 
means of earning a livelihood, hunting and fishing, is more methodi- 
cally carried out than in the southern latitudes, where the physiog- 
nomy of the surrounding nature is less sharply defined. 
Generally speaking, by ‘method of use” is meant those trained 
movements and actions which are bound up with the use of an 
implement. Such a “method of use” is a real cultural possession, 
inasmuch as familiarity with it is a demand which the primitive 
community makes on the single individual in order that he may be 
