170 H. P. STEENSBY. 
and borrowings from without also have conduced to the forming of the 
Eskimo culture which we now know, or which, more correctly, defined 
itself when the Europeans first established a connection with the dif- 
ferent divisions of the Eskimo. Yet the adaptation is the primary factor 
— the influence from without being a secondary factor in the history 
of the development. 
We have arrived at the result that the Eskimo culture is oldest 
in its Arctic form, and that it has arisen in the Arctic Archipelago 
as a product of adaptation. 
From the Archipelago the Arctic Eskimo culture spread east and 
west as far as the ice-conditions allowed. Towards the west it reached 
the districts at Bering Strait, where it came under foreign influence, 
especially under the so-called Pacific-Asiatic influence. By this we under- 
stand influence along the coast route from some different Asiatic Pacific 
peoples. The conception must be understood collectively, because there 
is so much that is unknown and unravelled as regards ethnology and 
history of these peoples; but there can hardly be any doubt that it is 
in this direction we must search for the most important source of the 
cultural influence on the Eskimo before they met the Europeans. 
It so happened that the foreign influence was not so much a re- 
fashioning of the Eskimo culture which was created in the Archipelago 
as a contribution towards a further development in established direc- 
tions. Some new implements were, of course, adopted, but that contact 
with a higher and richer technique has no doubt brought about im- 
provements of existing forms is of just as much significance. Thus not 
only was the Arctic form of the Eskimo culture improved, but 
simultaneously the Eskimo culture expanded and advanced further in 
a southern direction, whereby the Subarctic form was first fashioned 
and developed. 
The place for this influence, or rather for these various influences, 
amongst which the so-called Pacific-Asiatic is the most important, was 
the west coast of Alaska or the districts round Bering Strait, which we 
can best express by alluding to the most essentially geographic momen- 
tum viz., the approximation to Asia. 
With this demonstration of the Archipelago and Bering Strait 
being the two geographical focuses in the history of development of the 
Eskimo culture — the Archipelago as important for the adaptation 
and Bering Strait for the influence from without — the investigation 
at issue essentially ends. If one would make these results more intense 
one must do so by employment of other scientific methods, ethnographic, 
archeologic, etc. 
In the following, I myself shall endeavour, however, to throw a 
little more light on the process of development of the Eskimo culture 
by firstly investigating whether one can form any idea of the pre- 
Eskimo mother culture from which the oldest Arctic Eskimo culture 
