Theory on the Development of the 
Eskimo Culture. 
have now given in the preceding chapters firstly a more extensive an- 
thropogeographical study of the various nuances of the Eskimo cul- 
ture, nextly a smaller anthropogeographical summary of the adjacent 
forms of economic culture, and finally an ethnographical synopsis of the 
forms of Eskimo dwellings. 
Amongst the results of these investigations may be emphasized the 
demonstration of the point that two principal groups of elements occur 
in the economic culture of the Eskimo — an older group — the Palæ- 
eskimo — which may be explained as a geographical product of adap- 
tation, which in all probability issued from the regions between the 
Arctic Archipelago and the coast of the mainland — and a younger 
group, which is due to influence and borrowings from without, and must 
especially have been adopted and fashioned in the regions at Bering 
Strait — this is mentioned as the Neoeskimo. 
The investigation of the forms of dwellings plainly confirmed this 
distinction between the two layers of culture, and furthermore bore 
testimony to the fact that there must have been extensive Eskimo 
wanderings corresponding with each of these layers. 
For safety’s sake I wish to emphasize that with these sections I 
consider that I have finished the essential scientific investigations which 
I wish to advance. On the basis of the results attained, I intend in the 
following pages to try to outline a more elaborate theory of how, in my 
opinion, one must regard the probable process of the origin and devel- 
opment of the Eskimo culture on a large scale (compare the map). 
The Continental Area of the Pre-Eskimo. 
The oldest native seat to which with any probability at all one 
can trace back the Eskimo is the region between Barren Grounds and 
the northern part of the prairie. One must assume that at a certain 
period the Eskimo must have lived here, and have utilized the natural 
resources of the country by hunting and fishing in a like manner as the 
later Indian inhabitants did. 
