380  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
knowledge  were  undergoing  marked  cultural  evolution.  Even  the 
Thule  culture  of  the  Central  regions,  although  known  from  only  a 
few  sites  which  apparently  were  not  occupied  for  any  very  great  length 
of  time,  is  seen  to  have  undergone  certain  modifications.  In  Greenland 
this  is  still  more  evident,  for  Mathiassen's  painstaking  excavations 
have  shown  that  Eskimo  culture  there  has  been  undergoing  constant 
change  from  about  the  twelfth  century  up  to  the  present  time.  In  the 
west  the  evidence  for  cultural  change  is  even  greater.  Wherever  ex- 
cavations have  been  made — in  Cook  Inlet,  on  Kodiak  and  St.  Lawrence 
Islands,  at  Bering  Strait,  and  at  Barrow — far-reaching  changes  are 
found  to  have  occurred  in  prehistoric  times,  and  there  is  no  reason 
for  believing  that  all  of  them  were  by  any  means  due  primarily  to 
stimulus  from  outside  sources. 
In  the  light  of  recent  archeological  discoveries,  therefore,  it  would 
appear  that  prehistoric  Eskimo  culture  everywhere  has  exhibited  a 
marked  mutability ;  there  has  been  found  no  instance  of  a  culture  re- 
maining stationary  over  any  long  period  of  time.  If  we  accept  Birket- 
Smith's  theory,  however,  we  must  seek  the  origin  of  Eskimo  culture  in 
the  one  group  that  is  held  up  as  an  example  of  cultural  stability  per- 
haps without  parallel  anywhere,  in  the  group  that  in  some  almost 
miraculous  manner  is  supposed  to  have  frozen  its  culture  to  the  point 
where  it  continued  century  after  century  as  if  in  a  changeless  vacuum. 
And  yet  the  theory  possesses  an  innate  plausibility  from  the  very  fact 
that  the  Caribou  Eskimos  possess  a  simple  culture ;  and  since  the  first 
Eskimo  culture  must  also  have  been  simple  there  would  be  a  certain 
logic  in  assuming  that  this  existing  simple  culture  might,  after  all, 
in  spite  of  serious  obstacles  to  such  a  view,  represent  the  original 
condition.  Obviously,  the  test  of  this  assumption  lies  with  archeology. 
If  the  Caribou  Eskimos  do  represent  the  ancestral  type  from  which 
all  others  have  sprung,  we  should  expect  that  the  farther  back  into 
Eskimo  prehistory  we  go  the  more  we  would  find  the  culture  approach- 
ing the  original  Caribou  pattern.  We  should  expect  that  the  oldest 
Eskimo  culture  that  could  be  determined  archeologically  would  show 
strong  resemblances  to  the  supposed  prototype.  This,  of  course,  is 
not  the  case.  On  the  contrary,  the  oldest  form  of  Eskimo  culture  that 
has  yet  appeared  in  the  Western  regions  is  further  removed  from  the 
Caribou  Eskimo  culture  than  is  that  of  many  modern  groups.  It  is 
difficult  to  see,  therefore,  how  the  data  of  archeology  can  be  brought 
to  support  the  theory  of  the  central  origin  of  Eskimo  culture.  The 
Old  Bering  Sea  is,  of  course,  no  simple  or  primitive  culture,  but  an 
already  highly  specialized  Eskimo  culture.  This  being  the  case  it  is 
obvious  that  we  have  not  yet  by  any  means  solved  the  problem  of  the 
