NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND COLLINS  379 
expressed  by  Jenness  on  the  basis  of  his  pioneer  investigations  at 
Wales  and  the  Diomede  Islands.  We  have  seen  that  on  St.  Lawrence 
the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture  gave  rise  to  the  Punuk ;  that  on  the  Arctic 
coast  it  was  apparently  ancestral  to  the  Birnirk,  the  stage  from  which 
the  Thule,  the  dominant  prehistoric  culture  of  the  central  regions,  was 
derived.  The  Dorset  and  Cook  Inlet  cultures  dififer  in  so  many  respects 
from  the  Old  Bering  Sea  that  we  can  say  little  as  to  what  relationship 
may  have  existed  between  them  and  the  latter.  Neither  of  them,  how- 
ever, are  Eskimo  cultures  in  the  same  sense  as  is  the  Old  Bering  Sea 
culture,  which  in  spite  of  its  specialized  development  in  certain  direc- 
tions is  fundamentally  Eskimo,  and  basic,  apparently,  to  the  existing 
phases  of  northern  Eskimo  culture  from  Siberia  to  Greenland. 
But  what  bearing  have  the  Alaskan  investigations  on  the  theory  of 
the  central  origin  of  Eskimo  culture,  or  more  specifically  on  the  theory 
that  the  Caribou  Eskimos  possess  a  Proto-Eskimo  form  of  culture 
like  that  from  which  all  subsequent  forms  have  been  derived?  This 
view,  which  has  been  propounded  and  elaborated  with  such  erudition 
by  Birket-Smith,  is  worthy  of  a  more  extended  theoretical  discussion 
that  can  be  given  here.  We  may,  however,  indicate  very  briefly  what 
bearing  the  Alaskan  finds  seem  to  have  on  this  problem. 
Birket-Smith's  explanation  of  why  the  Caribou  Eskimos  remained 
in  their  Proto-Eskimo  condition  for  perhaps  thousands  of  years  while 
all  around  them  other  Eskimos  were  undergoing  cultural  change  is 
that  these  Central  Eskimos  had  never  gone  down  to  the  coast  as  did 
first  the  Palae-Eskimos  and  later  the  Eschato-Eskimos,  but  had  re- 
mained in  the  interior.  Hence  there  was  no  impelling  motive  for 
culture  change.  Implicit  in  this  explanation  seems  to  be  the  idea  that 
all  significant  changes  in  Eskimo  culture  have  come  about  through 
radical,  dynamic  movements :  the  Palae-Eskimo  culture  came  into 
being  when  a  group  of  Proto-Eskimos,  following  the  caribou  in  their 
migrations,  left  the  interior  and  took  up  the  hunting  of  sea  mammals 
on  the  coasts ;  the  Neo-Eskimo  culture  arose  when  the  Palae-Eskimos 
arrived  in  Alaska  and  came  into  contact  with  alien  cultures,  those  of 
the  Northwest  Coast  of  America  and  of  northeastern  Asia.  We  thus 
have  a  very  definite  picture  of  the  development  of  Eskimo  culture, 
but  one  which  to  only  a  very  limited  extent  calls  in  the  explanation 
of  anything  like  a  normal,  slow  growth  of  culture.  But  of  course 
the  very  idea  that  such  internal  culture  growth  should  have  taken  place 
among  the  Caribou  Eskimos  would  vitiate  completely  the  theory  of 
their  all  important  role  in  the  origin  of  Eskimo  culture,  for  the  theory 
demands  that  they  remain  absolutely  static  through  centuries — not  to 
say  millenniums — while  all  other  Eskimo  cultures  of  which  we  have 
