The maze of thoughts on the origin of the Eskimo shows one fact
conclusively, which is that the necessary evidence on the subject
has hitherto been insufficient. From whatever side the problem has
been approached, whether linguistically, culturally, from the study
of myths, or even somatologically, the materials were, it is plain,
more or less inadequate and there was not enough for satisfactory
comparisons. The best contributions to Eskimo studies, from the oldest
to the most recent, all accentuate the need for further research, and
more ample collections.
Another point is that heterogeneous and wide apart as many of the
opinions may seem, yet when the subject is looked upon with a larger
perspective they may often perhaps be harmonized. Thus a belief in an
American origin of the Eskimo need not exclude that in the Asiatic
derivation of his parental stock. Even in the case of the supposed
European derivation the Eskimo are understood to have reached America
through Asia; there is not one suggestion of any importance advocating
the coming of the Eskimo over northwestern Europe and Iceland. Only
the Meigs-Grote-Nordenskiöld theory of an ancient polar race and its
descent southward appears now as beyond the bounds of what would be at
least partly justifiable.
What is the contribution to the subject of the studies reported in this
treatise, with its relatively great amount of somatological material?
The answer is not easy.
Even the truly great and precious material at hand is not sufficient.
There are important parts of the Arctic, such as the Hudson Bay region,
Baffin Land, and the central region; several parts of the west coast,
such as the inland waters of the Seward Peninsula and the Eskimo
portions of the Selawik, Kobuk, Noatak, and Yukon Rivers; and above
all the Eskimo part of northeastern Siberia, from which there are
insufficient or no collections. There is, moreover, especially in this
country, a great want of skeletal material from the non-Eskimo Siberian
tribes, and also from the old European peoples that are of most
importance for comparisons. It must be plain, therefore, that even at
present no final deductions are possible. All that can be claimed for
the evidence here brought forth is that it clears, or tends to settle,
certain secondary problems, and that it presents indications of value
for the rest of the question.
The secondary problems that may herewith be regarded as settled are as
follows:
1. _Unity or plurality of the race._--The materials at hand give
no substantiation to the possibility of the Eskimo belonging to
more than one basic strain of people. They range in color from tan
or light reddish-yellow to medium brown; in stature from decidedly
short to above the general human medium; in head from brachycephalic
and low to extremely dolichocephalic, high and keel shaped; in eyes
from horizontal to decidedly mongoloid; in orbits from microseme
to hypermegaseme; in nose from fully mesorrhinic to extremely
leptorrhinic; in physiognomy from pure "Indian" to extreme "Eskimo."
Yet all through there runs, both in the living and in the skeletal
remains, so much of a basic identity that no separation into any
distinct original "races" is possible. At most it is permissible to
speak of a few prevalent types.
2. _Relation._--The general basic prototype of the Eskimo, according
to all evidence, is so closely akin to that of the Indian that the
two can not be fully separated. They appear only as the thumb and the
digits of the same hand, some large old mother stock from which both
gradually differentiated. This appears to be an unavoidable conclusion
from the present anthropological knowledge of the two peoples.
The next unavoidable deduction is that the mother stock of both
the Eskimo and the Indian can only be identified with the great
yellow-brown stem of man, the home of which was in Asia, but the roots
of which, as has been discussed elsewhere, were probably in ancient
(later paleolithic) Europe.[283] The latter fact may explain the
cultural as well as somatological resemblances between the Eskimo,
as well as the Indian (for the Indian, physically at least, has
much in common with the upper Aurignacians), and the upper glacial
European populations. But such an explanation can not in the light
of present knowledge legitimately be extended to the assumption that
either the Indian complex or the Eskimo originated as such in Europe;
they could be at most but parts of the eventual more or less further
differentiated Asiatic progeny of the upper paleolithic Europeans.
3. _Mixture._--It has been assumed by Boas and others that the eastern
Eskimo have become admixed with the eastern Indian and the western with
the Alaskan Indian, that the physical and especially craniological
differences between the eastern and western Eskimo were due to such
a mixture, and that both extremes deviated from the type of the pure
Eskimo, who was to be found somewhere in the central Arctic. The
evidence of the present studies does not sustain such an assumption.
As shown before[284] and is seen more clearly from the present data,
the western Eskimo type is also present or approached in various
localities in the far north (part of Smith Sound, Southampton Island,
part of the Hudson Bay coast, with probable spots in the central Arctic
proper). There is no indication of any central region where the western
Eskimo type would be much "purer" than elsewhere.
Individual skulls and skeletons in the west, particularly in certain
spots (especially on Seward Peninsula), show the same characteristics
as the most diverging skulls or skeletons in the farthest northeast.
And both in the west and in the east the most pronounced Eskimo
characteristics exceed similar features in the Indian, indicating
independent development. Such characteristics involve the stature
(taller in the west, shorter in the east than that of the Indian);
the size of the head (everywhere averaging higher in the Eskimo);
dolichocephaly, height of the head, its keel shape (all more pronounced
in the eastern and now and then a western Eskimo than in any Indian
group); the face, nose, orbits, and lower jaw; with the relative
proportions and other characteristics of the skeleton. All these point
to functional and other developments within the Eskimo groups and none
suggest a large Indian admixture.
It is well known that more or less blood mixture takes place among
all neighboring peoples where contact is possible, even if otherwise
there be much enmity. Such enmity, often in an extreme form, existed
everywhere it seems between the Eskimo and the Indian, as a result of
the encroaching of the former on the latter; there are many statements
to that effect. Within historic times also there are no records of any
adoptions or intermarriages between the two peoples. Nevertheless where
contact took place, as on the rivers and in the southwest as well as
the southeast of the Eskimo territory, some blood mixture, it would
seem, must have developed. The Indian neighbors show it, and it would
be strange if it remained one-sided. But of a mixture extensive enough
to have materially modified the type of the Eskimo in whole large
regions, such as the entire Bering Sea and most of the far northeast,
there is no evidence and little not only probability but even
possibility. Nothing approaching such an extensive mixture is shown by
the near-by Indians; and it would be most exceptional in people of this
nature if a much greater proportion of the mixture was into the Eskimo.
Finally, a mixture of diverse human types, unless very old, may
be expected to leave numerous physical signs of heterogeneity and
disturbance, none of which is shown by either the western or eastern
Eskimo. Such groups as that of the St. Lawrence Island, or that of
Greenland, are among the most homogeneous human groups known. The range
of variation of their characters is as a rule a strictly normal range,
giving a uniform curve of distribution, which is not consistent with
the notion of any relatively recent material mixture.
4. _The indications._--The indications of the data and observations
presented in this volume may be outlined as follows:
The Eskimo throughout their territory are but one and the same broad
strain of people. This strain is fundamentally related to that (or
those) of the American Indian. It is also uncontestably related to the
yellow-brown strains of Asia.
In many respects, such as pigmentation, build of the body,
physiognomy, large brain, fullness of forehead, fullness of the
fronto-sphenotemporal region, largeness of face and lower jaw, height
of the nose, size and characteristics of the teeth,[285] smallness of
hands and feet, etc., the Eskimos are remarkably alike over their whole
territory. They differ in details, such as stature, form of the head,
and breadth of the nose. But the distribution of these differences is
of much interest and probably significance. Higher statures, broader
heads, and broader noses are found especially in the west, the latter
two particularly in the Bering Sea region; low group statures, narrow
heads and narrow noses reach, with few exceptions, their extremes
in the northeast. Between the two extremes, however, there is no
interruption, but a gradation, with here and there an irregularity.
These conditions speak not of mixture but rather of adaptation and
differentiation.
They strongly suggest a moderate stream of people, rooted in Asia, of
fairly broad and but moderately high head, of a good medium stature,
with a mesorrhinic nose (and hence probably originally not far
northern), and with many other characteristics in common, reaching
America from northeasternmost Asia after the related Indians, spreading
along the seacoasts as far as it could, not of choice, or choice alone,
but mainly because of the blocking by the Indian of the roads toward
the south and through the interior; and gradually modifying physically
in adaptation to the new conditions and necessities; to climate, newer
modes of life, the demands of the kayak, and above all to the results
of the increased demands on the masticatory organs.
The narrowness, increased length and increased height of the Eskimo
skull, without change in its size or other characteristics, may readily
be understood as compensatory adaptations, the development of which was
initiated and furthered by the development and mechanical effects of
the muscles of mastication.
A similar conclusion has been reached in my former study on the central
and Smith Sound Eskimo (1910). It has been approached or reached
independently by other students of the Eskimo, notably Fürst and
Hansen (1915) in their great work on the East Greenlanders. It is a
conclusion of much biological importance for it involves not merely the
development but also the eventual inheritance of new characters.
Former authors, it was seen, have advanced the theories of an American
origin of the Eskimo. This could only mean that he developed from
the American Indian. And such a development would imply physical
and hereditary changes at least as great as those indicated in the
preceding paragraphs, and in less time. A differentiation commenced
well back in Asia, geographically and chronologically, and advancing,
to its present limits, in America would seem the more probable.
An origin of the Eskimo in Europe, during the last glacial invasion,
would not only push into the hazy far past the same changes as here
dealt with, but it would at the same time fail to explain the physical
differences within the Eskimo group, and deny any substantial changes
in him during the long time of his migration toward the American
northern coasts.
[Illustration: FIGURE 29.--Probable movements of people from
northeastern Asia to Alaska and in Alaska. (A. Hrdlička)]
Absolute proofs of the origin of the Eskimo, as of that of the various
strains of the Indians, are hardly to be expected. Such origins are so
gradual and insidious that they would escape detection even if watched
for while occurring; they are noticed only after sufficient differences
have developed and become established, which takes generations. The
solving of racial origins must depend on sound scientific induction.
Such induction may not yet be fully possible in the case of the Eskimo.
The evidence is not yet complete. But with the present and other most
recent data there is enough on hand for substantial indications. The
evidence shows that barring some irregularities, due possibly to later
intrusions or refluxes, the farther east in the Eskimo territory the
observer proceeds the more highly differentiated and divergent the
Eskimo becomes, and there is a greater gap between him and his Indian
neighbors, as well as other races. Proceeding from the east westward,
conditions are reversed. In general the farther west we proceed the
less exceptional on the whole the Eskimo becomes and the more he
approximates the Indian, particularly the Indian of Alaska and the
northwest coast. As this can not, in the light of present evidence, be
attributed alone to mixture, it is plain that if it were possible to
proceed a few steps farther in this direction the differences between
the Eskimo and the Indian would fade out so that a distinction between
the two would become difficult if not impossible.
The facts point, therefore, to an original identity of the source
from which were derived the Indian, more particularly his latest
branches, and the Eskimo, and to the identification of this source
with the palaeo-Asiatic yellow-brown people of lower northern Asia.
The differentiation of the Eskimo from this source must have proceeded
over a fairly long time, and probably started already it would seem
on the northern coasts of Asia, where conditions were present capable
of beginning to shape him into an Eskimo; to be carried on since in
the Bering Sea area and especially in the Seward Peninsula and farther
northward and eastward. In a larger sense the cradle of the Eskimo,
therefore, while starting probably in northeast Asia, covered in
reality a much vaster region, extending from northern Asia and the
Bering Sea to the far American Arctic.