344  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL,    96 
greater  part  again  disappeared.  Only  in  those  places  where  the  later  culture 
did  not  obtain  a  firm  footing  did  the  lamp  remain  in  use,  i.  e.,  by  the  northern 
Pacific  and  among  the  Eskimos,  among  the  latter  in  a  further  developed  form 
as  a  source  of  heat  as  much  as  a  source  of  light,  and  likewise  in  a  specialised 
form  among  the  large  number  of  civilized  peoples  from  the  Mediterranean  over 
South  Asia  to  East  Asia. 
Although  there  seems  Httle  basis  for  the  assumption  that  the  lamp 
was  once  more  widely  spread  in  North  America,  having  disappeared 
over  large  areas  with  the  advent  of  the  snowshoe  hunting  stage,  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  it  was  one  of  the  original  elements  of  the 
coast  culture  or  ice-hunting  stage.  However,  it  is  difficult  to  sec 
how  Birket-Smith's  theory  of  the  ancestral  status  of  the  Caribou 
Eskimo  lamp  can  be  reconciled  with  the  fact  that  in  the  Old  World 
the  lamp  is  a  very  ancient  culture  element,  one  which  goes  back  to 
Paleolithic  times.  Hatt  (1934,  pp.  2762,  2763)  has  recognized  this 
discrepancy,  pointing  out  that  the  lamp  is  a  specific  Eskimo  trait 
which  could  not  have  been  borrowed  from  any  other  American 
culture  and  which  must  therefore  have  been  brought  over  from  Asia. 
If  the  simple  hollow  stone  lamp  of  the  Caribou  Eskimo  and  the  similar 
stone  or  shell  lamps  of  other  peoples  are  to  be  regarded  as  primitive, 
original  forms  that  have  persisted  unchanged  for  thousands  of  years 
it  would  be  necessary  to  know^  something  of  the  history  of  the  element 
in  each  particular  case  so  as  to  avoid  accepting  as  primitive  some  forms 
which  might  be  only  degenerate.  Thus,  according  to  Jochelson  (1928, 
p.  68),  the  Kamchadal  who  formerly  used  stone  lamps  now  make 
use  of  various  improvised  forms :  "  The  present  Kamchadal  some- 
times still  use  stone  lamps  for  lighting,  but  often  a  tin  box,  iron  frying 
pan,  or  a  clam  shell  substitutes  for  the  stone  lamp."  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  history  of  other  simple  Old  World  lamps  mentioned 
by  Rirket-Smith,  such  as  the  hollowed-out  stone  of  the  Mongols,  or 
the  shells  used  in  remote  parts  of  Scotland,  the  Orkneys,  Lapland,  etc., 
there  is  no  archeological  evidence  that  any  of  the  b^skimo  lamps 
have  developed  from  such  simple  local  forms.  Jochelson  found  both 
crude  and  finished  types  on  the  Aleutians,  and  while  he  states  that 
"  pglished  stone  lamps  and  adzes  were  ....  discovered  chiefly  in 
the  upper  layers"  (1925,  p.  122),  he  also  found  some  well-made 
specimens  in  the  lower  levels.  De  Laguna  found  both  crude  and 
finished  lamps  at  Cook  Inlet  but  no  evidence  that  one  type  had  preceded 
the  other.  During  three  seasons  of  work  at  a  single  large  site  on  Kodiak 
Island,  Hrdlicka  found  a  large  number  of  stone  lamps,  and  observes 
(1935,  p.  48)  that  the  earlier  forms  were  the  more  elaborate. 
The  culture  of  the  oldest  occupants  of  the  site  was  in  t!ie  main  superior  to 
that  of  the  same  people  of  later  time  and  differed  from  this  in  several  marked 
