192 POLAR PROBLEMS 



Americanoid tribes, forcing them back to the west and to the east. 

 However, the links of this chain still remain, from the Kamchadals 

 in Asia to the Tlingits and Haidas in America. For some time this 

 Eskimo wedge expanded within the Bering Sea region and moved 

 southward, then again it was compressed and driven back northward. 

 There is no answer as yet to the question whence, originally, came 

 this wedge, whether from the west or from the east, and whether the 

 Asiatic Eskimos are primitive inhabitants of Asia or only a colony 

 that came from America. Only the study of the polar ethnographical 

 region in its whole extension can shed light on these tangled and 

 complicated intertribal relations. 



Physical Types and Abilities of the Eurasian 

 Arctic Tribes 



We shall begin our survey of polar ethnographical problems by 

 way of physical anthropology and then discuss somewhat more 

 fully questions of material and spiritual culture. 



The physical type of the polar peoples shows three main variants, 

 often found together in the same tribe and often intermixed: (i) 

 Mongoloid, (2) Turkoid, and (3) Finnoid. These terms, however, 

 are purely conventional and do not imply the intermixing of the 

 Arctic tribes with Mongols and Turks. Only intermixture with 

 Finns, as has been said above, has really taken place. As to the 

 Mongoloid and Turkoid types we may assume that they are the 

 fundamental human types for all Northern and Central Asia and 

 partly also for Europe and Arctic and sub-Arctic America and that the 

 formation of these types preceded the racial subdivisions of the present. 



The Arctic tribes, as would be expected, show quite an unex- 

 ampled endurance as regards cold, hunger, tiredness, and sleep- 

 lessness — the last especially in summer, "when the sun doesn't sleep." 

 It is difficult to tell who are superior in these respects, the western or 

 the eastern tribes, coastal seal hunters or nomadic reindeer breeders 

 of the tundra. Even the sub-Arctic Yakuts are able to sleep in winter 

 at a temperature of —50° C. near a wood fire under the open sky. 

 They strip quite naked and, having no sleeping bags, simply cover 

 themselves with their clothes instead of a blanket. Snow falls on the 

 bare body and melts without causing them noticeable inconvenience. 



At the same time the polar tribes are extremely susceptible to 

 contagious diseases brought by the Russians, such as syphilis, small- 

 pox, grippe, scarlet fever, and even measles. In the far northeast 

 the same epidemics devastate Russian villages and native camps, 

 often carrying away a third of the scanty population. 



Further, we have to note a special polar hysteria, common to 

 many (but not all) polar tribes and particularly to Russians also, 



