209. Northern Marginal Areas
The Arctic, Mackenzie, Plateau, and California areas were also but little influenced by Middle American civilization. In fact, most of the elements which they share with it may be considered direct survivals of the general proto-American culture out of which the early Middle American civilization emerged. Yet why these areas on the Pacific side of North America should have profited so much less by the diffusion of Mexican advancement than the areas on the Atlantic, is not clear. In the mostly frozen Arctic and Mackenzie tracts, the hostile environment may have forbidden. But this explanation certainly does not apply to the California area which lies at the very doors of the Southwest and yet refrained from taking over such fundamentals as agriculture and pottery. Sparseness of population cannot be invoked as a cause, since at least along the coast the density of population was greater than in almost all the eastern half of the continent.
Of the people of these four areas, the Eskimo are the only ones that evinced notable originality. It is easy to attribute this quality of theirs to the stern rigor of environment. In fact, it has been customary to appeal to the Eskimo as an example of the popular maxim that necessity is the mother of invention. Yet it is clear that no great weight can be attached to this simple philosophy. It is true that without his delicately adjusted harpoon, his skin boat, his snow hut, his dog sled, and his seal oil lamp, the Eskimo could not have maintained an existence on the terrifically inhospitable shores of the Arctic. But there is nothing to show that he was forced to live in this environment. Stretches of mountains, desert, and tundra in other parts of the world were often left uninhabited by uncivilized peoples. Why did not the Eskimo abandon his Arctic shore or refuse to settle it in the first place, crowding his way instead into some more favorable habitat? His was a sturdy stock that should have had at least an equal chance in a competition with other peoples.
Furthermore it is evident that rigorous environment does not always force development or special cultural adaptations. The tribes of the Mackenzie-Yukon and the most northerly part of the Northeast area lived under a climate about as harsh as that of the Eskimo. In fact they were immediate neighbors; yet their culture is definitely more meager. A series of the most skilled devices of the Eskimo were wanting among them. If necessity were truly as productive a cause of cultural progress as is commonly thought, these Athabascan and Algonkin Indians should have been stimulated into a mechanical ingenuity comparable to that of the Eskimo, instead of continuing to rank below them.
These considerations compel the conclusion that the Eskimo did not develop the achievements of his culture because he lived in his difficult environment, but that he lived in the environment because he possessed a culture capable of coping with it. This does not mean that he had his culture worked out to the last detail before he settled on the American shores of the Arctic ocean. It does mean that he possessed the fundamentals of the culture, and the habits of ingenuity, the mechanical and practical turn of mind, which enabled him to carry it farther and meet new requirements as they came up. Where and how he acquired the fundamentals is obscure. It is well to remember in this connection that the physical type of the Eskimo is the most distinctive in the New World, and that his speech has as yet shown no inclination to connect with any other American language. It is conceivable that the origin of the Eskimo is to be set at a time later than that of the American race and somewhere in Asia. The fact that at present there are Eskimo villages on the Siberian side of Behring Strait is too recent and local a phenomenon to afford strong confirmation of such a view, but certainly does not operate against it. Somewhere in the Siberian region, then, within occasional reach of influences emanating from higher centers of civilization in Asia or Europe, the Eskimo may have laid the foundations of their culture, specialized it further as they encountered new conditions in new Asiatic habitats, and evolved only the finishing touches of their remarkable adaptation after they spread along the northernmost shores of America. Some of the Old World culture influences which had reached them before they entered America may go back to the Magdalenian culture of the Palæolithic. There are at any rate certain resemblances between Magdalenian and Eskimo cultures that have repeatedly impressed observers: the harpoon, spear thrower, lamp, carving, and graphic art (§ [67]).