368  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
could  reasonably  be  expected  to  come  nearer.  The  igloo  skulls  are  even  narrower 
in  the  vault  than  the  Greenlanders,  which  means  so  much  farther  away  from  the 
southwestern,  midwestern,  and  Asiatic  Eskimo [Hrdlicka,  1930,  p.  325.] 
Mason,  commenting  on  the  results  of  Hrdlicka's  studies  on  the  old 
Barrow  crania,  called  attention  to  the  apparently  contradictory  fact 
that  the  physical  type  of  this  supposed  ancient  Tliule  group  was 
entirely  different  from  that  of  the  other  Eskimo  groups  that  were 
known  to  have  possessed  a  Thule  type  of  culture,  namely  the  modern 
IVjint  Barrow  Eskimos,  the  recently  extinct  Sadlermiut  of  South- 
ampton Island  and  the  Polar  Eskimo  of  Smith  Sotmd  in  northwest 
(ireenland.  However,  in  spite  of  this,  the  old  Barrow  skeletons  were 
accepted  as  exemplifying  the  physical  type  associated  with  the  Thule 
culture. 
In  1934  I  questioned  this  interpretation  on  the  ground  that  the 
cultural  material  excavated  by  Van  Valin  was  pre-Thule  and  in  part 
contemporaneous  with  the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture  ;  I  suggested,  there- 
fore, that  since  the  modern  Point  Barrow  Eskimos — the  western 
group  closest  to  the  Thule  culture — were  physically  related  to  the 
Southampton  Island  and  Polar  Eskimo  groups,  it  seemed  more 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  physical  type  of  the  Thule  culture  was 
exliibited  by  these  three  modern  groups  than  by  Van  Valin  s  pre- 
Thule  group  from  Barrow. 
The  cultural  evidence,  therefore,  points  to  the  modern  north  Alaskan  Eskimos 
and  their  immediate  predecessors  as  the  most  likely  "  bearers  of  the  Thule 
culture  "  in  Alaska.  In  the  Van  Valin  skeletons,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
a  sample  of  an  earlier  population,  the  age  of  which  is  not  known,  although  it 
was  in  part  contemporaneous  with  the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture,  the  oldest  thus 
far  known  from  Alaska.    [Collins,  1934  b,  p.  311.] 
The  determining  factor  was  the  skeletal  material  excavated  by 
Mathiassen  from  the  prehistoric  Thule  sites  in  the  Hudson  Bay  region, 
and  as  long  as  this  was  unpublished  the  question  of  the  physical  type 
associated  with  the  Thule  culture  remained  in  doubt.  This  important 
material  has  now  been  published  by  Fischer-Miller  and  the  results 
are  entirely  confirmatory  of  the  above  view.  The  physical  type  of 
the  Thule  Eskimos,  as  revealed  by  the  skeletal  remains  from  Naujan, 
the  most  important  of  the  Thule  sites  in  the  Central  region,  is  seen 
to  have  been  practically  identical  with  that  of  the  modern  Point  Barrow 
Eskimos  and  entirely  distinct  from  the  "  old  igloo  "  or  pre-Thule 
remains  at  Barrow.   Fischer-Miller's  conclusions  are  as  follows : 
If  from  similarity  of  culture  we  had  expected  to  find  agreement  between 
the  skulls  from  the  old  graves  at  Point  Barrow  and  those  from  Naujan,  we 
should  be  disappointed.    Even  taking  into  account  the  relatively  small  number 
