1 84 POLAR PROBLEMS 



streams originated, however, and how far southward one or another 

 may have reached, are questions of considerable scope still awaiting 

 further investigation. 



Mixture and Superposition of Cultures 



Greenland is of course the extreme eastern limit of the Eskimo 

 migrations, forming a cul-de-sac where further progress becomes 

 impossible. Here, then, as under similar conditions in India, we 

 find a mingling and superposition of the cultures of many different 

 immigrant tribes, which renders study of the question difficult but 

 at the same time more interesting. 



On the west coast, where we have what is by Eskimo standards 

 a densely populated region and where Europeans have traveled and 

 traded and had their dwellings for centuries past, it is high time that 

 the question should be taken under consideration, before its solution 

 is rendered impossible by the greatest danger of all, to wit, the inter- 

 ference of untrained hands hunting for antiques. 



It is most fortunate, then, that plans are now under consideration 

 in Denmark for systematic research in this field. The Cape York 

 district in particular would be a most important site, that is to say 

 the area between Cape York and Humboldt Glacier, which forms, 

 as it were, the entrance into Greenland. 



Apart from the Eskimos, we have in Greenland also the problem 

 of the ancient Northmen and their fate and the question of possible 

 reciprocal influence between their form of culture and that of the 

 Eskimos; then, again, there is the possibility of Eskimo immigration 

 to the east coast prior to the arrival of the Northmen, who, as we know, 

 saw little of it in the earlier times but found traces of previous oc- 

 cupation. 



The leading problem in Greenland, and one of essential importance 

 to the Eskimo question as a whole, is at what stage of culture the 

 earliest immigrants were when they arrived and which were the tribes 

 that reached so far to the east. The question as to the actual origin 

 of Eskimo culture itself, however, is one that must be studied in 

 regions farther west. 



Up to now the Thule culture is the oldest form of Eskimo culture 

 of which we have any detailed knowledge and which has been geo- 

 logically determined as to date; the position of the Cape Dorset 

 culture is still vague; there is perhaps no great difference in point 

 of time between the two. The Thule culture, however, is based to 

 a marked degree on the capture of marine animals and has its origin 

 in the west. 



The question as to the development of the Eskimo coast culture 

 is also one of importance on the Pacific shores of Alaska, and parallels 



