ie 
——— 
An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 167 
‘the Subarctic regions, and partly by the influence and incitation exerted 
by the cultures with which they there (especially in the districts around 
Bering Strait) came into contact. 
This transition from Arctic to Subarctic Eskimo culture is, anthro- 
pogeographically, easily accounted for, while a development in the 
opposite direction from Subarctic to Arctic would be rather inconceiv- 
able, there being in the Subarctic culture an entire absence of any 
germs from which some of the chief elements in the Arctic winter-culture 
might be able to spring. Consequently, in the latter case there could be 
no other explanation than this, that they were cultural borrowings, but no 
other form of culture is known from which the most Arctic cultural 
objects and methods of hunting could be conceived to have been adopted. 
This negative consideration is also an argument in favour of the 
Arctic form of culture being the original one. 
The Home of the Eskimo Culture from an Anthropo- 
geographical point of view. 
The home of Eskimo Culture is consequently synonymous with the 
home or point of origin of Arctic Eskimo Culture. 
The point of origin must necessarily have been an area in which » 
there were the necessary geographical conditions for the existence of 
the Arctic Eskimo culture. Indeed, very special conditions must have 
been present in this area for it to have forced the ancient Eskimo, 
through the demands of adaptation, to modify their original culture 
in an “Eskimoic”’ direction. 
Even according to this view there can scarcely be any question of 
other tracts than such as are still inhabited by Eskimo. The north 
coast of Siberia is excluded by its geographical nature. Its decidedly 
flat-shore character with low-water areas of great extent, and its barrier- 
forming masses of pack-ice and lack of extensive fields of winter-ice over 
deep water behind protective groups of islands, all have prevented 
Eskimo culture from being able to find, on the whole, means of distri- 
bution there. ; 
Then there is the north coast of America. But even that is too 
large to be taken, as a whole, for the point of origin. For instance, we 
must leave out the stretch of coast along Alaska’s north-west and north 
coasts, from Kotzebue Sound towards’ the Mackenzie, because, for 
similar reasons as exist on the north coast of Asia, it is not inviting 
for the Eskimo, and only at places, few and far between, from Kotzebue 
Sound to Point Barrow are small groups of Eskimo met with, who 
are even mainly dependent on whale-hunting from umiaks of big 
whales — thus borrowing from more southerly regions in their manner 
of obtaining a livelihood. 
