NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND COLLINS  383 
western  Siberia  seems  to  have  been  provided  in  the  recent  excavations 
on  the  Ya-mal  Peninsula,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ob  River,  where  there 
has  been  revealed  an  old  Eskimo-like  culture  which  made  use  of  pot- 
tery, baleen,  bone  and  ivory  implements,  toggle  harpoon  heads,  and 
the  kayak  (Cernecov,  1935). 
The  recent  excavations  in  nothern  Alaska  have  thrown  considerable 
light  on  the  problems  of  Eskimo  prehistory,  but  they  have  by  no 
means  provided  the  final  solutions  thereto.  They  have  revealed  an 
ancient  Eskimo  culture  which  is  seen  to  liave  been  ancestral  to  the 
existing  phases,  and  yet,  paradoxically  enough,  this  Old  Bering  Sea 
culture  is  in  many  respects  a  more  highly  developed,  a  more  specialized 
Eskimo  culture  than  any  other  known.  This  can  only  mean  that  we 
must  extend  our  search  still  farther  into  the  past  if  we  are  to  find 
the  simple  beginnings  of  this  old  culture  and  presumably,  therefore, 
of  Eskimo  culture  generally. 
Although  we  are  unable  to  say  just  where  and  when  the  Old  Bering 
Sea  culture  arose,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  general  direction  in 
which  we  must  turn  in  seeking  its  origin.  This  is  northern  Eurasia, 
the  region  in  which  we  find  numerous  striking  parallels  to  Eskimo  cul- 
ture, and  the  only  region  where  we  find  on  the  one  hand  the  geo- 
graphical conditions  essential  to  the  establishment  of  a  settled  mari- 
time culture  based  on  the  hunting  of  sea  mammals,  and  on  the  other 
hand,  either  existing  today  or  having  existed  in  former  times,  such 
basic  Old  Bering  Sea  elements  as  the  square  wooden  earth-covered 
house  with  entrance  passage,  skin  boats,  sledges  and  toboggans,  the 
harpoon  with  toggle  head,  throwing  board  and  bird  dart,  lamps,  pot- 
tery vessels,  chipped  stone  and  rubbed  slate  implements.  These  ele- 
ments are  found  widely  distributed  throughout  northern  Eurasia,  and 
we  may  assume  that  they  formed  a  part  of  the  culture  of  those  first 
peoples  who  followed  the  rivers  to  the  Arctic  coasts  and  who  some- 
where between  Bering  Strait  and  the  Kara  Sea  developed  a  culture 
which  embodied  the  general  features  of  Eskimo  culture  as  we  know 
it  in  its  earliest  western  form.  As  to  the  immediate  origin  of  the 
Old  Bering  Sea  culture,  the  present  indications  point  to  northeastern 
Siberia,  somewhere  between  the  mouths  of  the  Anadyr  and  Kolyma 
Rivers,  as  the  area  in  which  the  culture  in  the  specific  form  that  we 
know  it  came  into  being. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Andersson,  J.  G. 
1923  a.An   early   Chinese  culture.    Bull.   Geol.    Surv.    China,   no.    5,  pt.    i, 
pp.  1-68,  October. 
i923b.The  cave  deposit   at   Sha   Kuo   T'un   in   Fengtien.     Paleontol.    Sin., 
ser.  D,  vol.  i,  fasc.  i. 
