Contributions to the Anthropology of the East Greenlanders. 159 



arms, blacksmiths short thick arms, tailors short, thin legs etc. 

 When we bear in mind the pursuits of the Greenlanders, how assi- 

 duously they exercise themselves in casting the harpoon from the 

 time when they are quite small , and how they pass many hours 

 a day from their j^outh up in the incredibly narrow kaiak, there is 

 nothing improbable in the supposition that their strong arms and 

 weak legs have thus been developed as a direct consequence of 

 their pursuits. 



This suggestion, however, is put forward merely as a hypothesis; 

 in order to prove it it would be necessary to prosecute far more 

 exclusive investigations, examining individuals of different ages, both 

 among the Eskimo whose pursuits are the same as those of the 

 East and West Greenlanders, and particularly among the tribes who 

 do not' make use of the kaiak, that is to say especially those that 

 live in the northern districts about Hudson Bay^). Unfortunately 

 we are not yet in possession of this material; but there is no doubt 

 that we should thus be enabled to go a long way towards the 

 solution of the problem of the stability of races, the far-reaching 

 importance of which it would be superfluous to point out. 



It follows from statements just made as to the short legs that 

 the body is comparatively long, but at the same time it is broad 

 and strongly built. The chest especially is powerfully developed in a 

 quite unusual degree, as is strikingly shown by the chest measure- 

 ment which on an average is 837 mm in the case of men and 

 856 mm in the case of women. When we bear in mind that the 

 chest measurement of healthy and well-developed persons in Den- 

 mark is not more than half of the height, we can form a fair 

 notion of the size of the East Greenlander's chest. The difference 

 of sex is more marked here than with regard to the height, as 

 appears clearly from the proportions, the average chest girth being 

 575/1000 of the average height in the case of men, and only 557/1000 

 in the case of women. Individual variation is very slight, being 

 only 18 pro mille in the case of women, whereas the individual 

 variation of the height is 99 and 79 respectively pro mille of its 

 average. 



The abdomen is well-formed and not very prominent, rather 



ii 



We need not, however, go so far afield to find Eskimo with powerfulh' devel- 

 oped legs. In Danish North Greenland, where there is often open water only 

 for three months in the j^ear, the time spent in the kaiak is too short to cause 

 crippling of the legs, the kaiaks, moreover, being comparativel}' roomy ; and in 

 the South Greenland reindeer regions the people's mode of life in the summer- 

 time cannot but have a beneficial effect this луау. On the whole West coast, 

 however, the matter is complicated by the strong admixture of foreign blood. 



