314  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
What,  then,  has  been  the  role  of  the  Thule  harpoon  types  in  other 
parts  of  the  Eskimo  territory?  Mathiassen  (1930b,  p.  181)  is  of 
the  opinion  that  "  they  form  the  earHest,  most  primitive  group  of 
harpoon  heads  and  have  been  distributed  from  Siberia  to  Greenland, 
everywhere  predominating  in  Thule  Culture  finds,  to  whose  most  char- 
acteristic types  they  belong  ",  a  view  that  harmonizes  with  his  belief 
(1930  b,  p.  325)  that  the  eastward  movement  of  the  Thule  peoples 
was  "  the  first  spreading  of  the  Eskimos  over  the  Arctic  coasts  of 
America."  If  the  Thule  harpoon  heads  are  the  oldest  forms  that 
have  existed  in  the  Central  regions  and  Greenland,  then  it  is  evident 
that  subsequent  developments  in  these  regions  have  followed  an  en- 
tirely different  course  from  those  observed  in  Alaska.  In  the  se- 
quences established  in  the  west  we  have  a  typological  development 
consistent  with  stratigraphic  conditions ;  on  St.  Lawrence  Island  it 
is  possible  to  trace  the  development  of  the  local  forms  step  by  step 
and  to  observe  the  exact  manner  in  which  the  simple  modern  forms 
have  evolved.  Furthermore,  if  we  take  into  account  the  specific  char- 
acters that  distinguish  the  forms,  we  see  that  none  of  the  older  types 
have  persisted  or  reappeared.  When  we  turn  to  the  Thule  culture, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  find  that  the  Thule  type  3  head,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  important  types,  even  at  the  oldest  sites,  differs  in  no 
way  from  the  form  still  in  use  among  the  Polar  Eskimos,  as  Mathiassen 
has  shown ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  less  important  Thule  types  All 
c  I  and  A  II  c  2 — (thin,  with  closed  socket,  and  with  blade  parallel 
and  at  right  angles,  respectively,  to  the  line  hole)  which  are  still  in 
use  over  a  large  part  of  the  Eskimo  territory.  If  the  Thule  culture 
has  an  antiquity  of  a  thousand  years,  as  Mathiassen  believes,  we  have 
here  a  remarkable  example  of  cultural  stability,  the  more  remarkable 
because  of  the  striking  contrast  it  affords  to  conditions  in  the  west, 
where  as  we  have  seen,  harpoon  heads  have  been  undergoing  constant 
change  from  the  Old  Bering  Sea  period  down  to  the  present  time. 
There  is  a  further  difference  to  be  observed.  Excavations  at  Barrow, 
Bering  Strait,  and  St.  Lawrence  Island  have  shown  that  in  the  west 
the  oldest  forms  thus  far  found  are  the  most  complicated,  the  later 
forms  simple ;  in  the  central  region  and  Greenland  the  older  Thule 
forms  are  simple,  the  later  forms  more  elaborate.  This  in  itself  is 
not  surprising,  as  there  would  be  no  reason  to  expect  absolute  uni- 
formity of  cultural  development  over  so  wide  an  area.  The  immediate 
question,  however,  is  how  to  account  for  the  later,  more  elaborate 
forms  of  harpoon  heads  in  the  east.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  some  of 
the  Thule  forms  have  persisted  without  change  down  to  the  present 
time,  and  that  others  have  undergone  the  far-reaching  modifications 
