Research Items

Abstract

Eskimo Migrations THE bearing of recent researches on the vexed problem of Eskimo migration and cultures is discussed by Dr. T. Mathiassen in an article in the Geographical Review of July. He regards the Thule culture as originating in Asia and representative of the first Eskimo migration from west to east across Arctic America and into Greenland by Smith Sound. The Bering Sea culture of St. Lawrence Island he believes to be older than the Thule culture, and puts the Eskimo settlement of Alaska much further back than was previously assumed. Dr. Mathiassen disagrees with Mr. Birket-Smith's theory of the first peopling of Alaska from the east by Palseo-Eskimo who were derived from the primordial Eskimo on the Barren Grounds of Canada. The Caribou Eskimo are not the last survivors of these primordial Eskimo whose descendants adopted a sea culture, but rather a residual offshoot of a coastal people. The Cape Dorset culture of Labrador and the eastern shores of Hudson Bay, described by D. Jenness, would seem to be derived from the Thule culture and not from the Caribou Eskimo, but the question arises whether the people who left this culture in Labrador were not Indians rather than Eskimo.