BBDLICKA] ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE ESKIMO 353 



Abbott, 1876 : 14 "It is fair to presume that the first human beings 

 that dwelt along the shores of the Delaware were really the same 

 people as the present inhabitants of Arctic America." 



Grote, 1875: 15 Basing himself on certain biological reasonings, the 

 author concludes "that the Eskimos are the existing representatives 

 of the man of the American glacial epoch, just as the White Mountain 

 butterfly {Oeneis semidea) is the living representative of a colony of 

 the genus planted on the retiring of the ice from the valley of the 

 White Mountains." 



In a later communication ir " the author expresses the opinion that 

 the peopling of America "was effected during the Tertiary; that 

 the ice modified races of Pliocene man. existing in the north of Asia 

 and America, forced them southward, and then drew them back to 

 the locality where they hail undergone their original modifica- 

 tion. * * * 



"During the process, then, which resulted in the race modification 

 of the Eskimos, their original numbers must have been decreased 

 by the slowly but ever increasing cold of the northern regions, until 

 experience and physical adaptation combined brought them to a 

 state of comparative stability as a race." 



Baron Nordenskiold 17 thought that the Eskimo might probably 

 be the true " autochthones " of the polar regions, i. e., that they had 

 inhabited the same previous to the glacial age, at a period when a 

 climate prevailed here equal to that of northern Italy at present, as 

 proved by the fossils found at Spitsbergen and Greenland. As - it 

 might be assumed that man had existed even during the Tertiary 

 period, there was a great ileal in favor of the assumption that he bad 

 lived in those parts which were most favorable to his existence. The 

 question was one of the highest importance, as, if it could be proved 

 that the Eskimo descended from a race which inhabited the polar 

 regions in the very earliest times, we should be obliged to assume 

 that there was a northern (polar) as well as an Asiatic cradle of the 

 human race, which would open up new fields of research, both to the 

 philologist and the ethnologist, and probably remnants of the culture 

 and language of the original race might be traced in the present polar 

 inhabitants of both Europe and Asia. 



" Abbott, C. C, Traces of American Autocbthon. Am. Nat., p. 329. June, 1876. 



" Grote, A. R., Effect of tbe Glacial Epoch Upon the Distribution of Insects in Nort'.: 

 America. Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. Sci.. Detroit meeting, 1875, B. Natural History, p. 225. 



ite, a. R . On the Peopling of America. Bull. Buffalo Soc. Nat. So., m, p. 181-185, 

 1S77. 



17 Eskimo. Lecture before the CJeorgr. Soc. of Stockholm, Dec. 19, 18S4 ; abstract ia 

 Proc. Roy. Georgr. Soc, VII, No. 6, p. 370-371. London, 1885. 



