Introduction.

The following plan, whiah I have occupied myself with for some time, is presented now because there is much that seems to indicate that it will at this time be understood and be received with interest in those countries which I purpose to approach.

I am quite well aware that my suggestion contains many ideas that possibly will meet with criticism. On the other hand I am not afraid of confessing my belief in the problems, as too much caution and reticence will never lead to such a collaboration as that which is necessary in order that action may be taken over as broad a front as the one indicated here.

I also know quite well that much of what I am advancing here has been known for a long time and often discussed among scientists. However, it has not so much been my object to bring forward anything new as to make an endeavour to get as many countries as possible to start upon a work such as that here described.

In thus taking it for granted that the suggestion will meet with interest in the circles to which I am appealing!, I also entertain the hope that no scientist, whatever the views he may hold, will have any objection to raise against the objects which form the background of my plan being taken up simultaneously, or as nearly simultaneously as possible.

I.

We were on a caribou hunt on the great Naternaq plains that lie behind Egedesminde. It was one of my very first sledge journeys far from the haunts of man. To me, a new and remarkable land. But my fellow-hunter, Manasse, knew every inch of these huge Polar steppes which wind their way in and out between inland ice and deep fjords, from far north Sydost Bay south of ChristianShaab and down to the Pingo plains behind Holstensborg.

It was in January, and although the short, dark winter days are
usually renowned for their calmness, we had a fresh breeze every

day, bringing snow and bitter cold that cut like knives through our
furs.

„It is the inland ice breathing upon us!" said Manasse. „This wind comes from the eternal winter, where all evil spirits live. There are inland trolls up there, just as big as tents. And pot-trolls, who go about with everboiling pots over their shoulders — cooking pots so large that they can put live men into them without flensing them!"

Manasse's voice is pregnant with all the uncanniness he himself feels, and every time a whirling gust of wind enshrouds us with its icy breath, even I cannot resist a glance up towards the great icemargin, standing like a whitish grey stiffened cloud over the background of the plains. It so dominates its surroundings that everything comes under its influence, and one understands why the Eskimos shudder at the immensity behind its horizon, the boundlessness of all that which one instinctively feels is hostile to life — to man, and to animals!

High up above us comes a flying raven. The dogs catch sight of it, and at once their strength knows no bounds; we rush forward at such a furious speed that a wake of flying snow rises up from our sledge-runners.

„There must be caribou near us", whispers Manasse, his voice hoarse with the ardour of the hunter. Ravens never come on a chance errand, they only show themselves When they are bent upon something they have discovered. Their eyes see what we cannot see".

And really, the raven did seem to be heading with the confidence born of sure sight up from its lofty sky, and when it vanished in a ridge of high ground we followed the same course. For an hour we drove at the same high speed, and when in the twilight we rounded the foot of a hill, we came in sight of something before us that made us gape with astonishment, For there, half-way up on a 'hill, was a blazing fire! A moment later we pulled up below it and were received with cordial cries of welcome by a young man and wife who were also hunting caribou. They 'both laughed with pleasure at the unexpectedvisit. They had had good luck and had secured several animals,and, what is more, they had certainly known how to make themselves comfortable. 'For in a fissure in the rock where a crag jutted out like a shedroof, they had bricked up the wide opening with stones and frozen hides and thus made a cosy rock-cave with a narrow entrance. They ihad also built up a platform and covered it with a thick layer of soft, fragrant grass which they had dug up out of the snow. On each side of the platform burned a moss wick in a crude bowl of stone, with a thick piece of deer-fat over it. So

simply and easily had these two made themselves a dwelling, a nest
halfway up the gale-swept hill.

We were immediately invited to share the cave and the comfort with them, and it was not long before we were as old friends. We men lay down on the platform on the soft grass and recounted hunting tales, while the young woman prepared our food over a fire that was burning outside the cave. The fireplace was constructed of two 'blocks of stone, and over them was laid a large flat one. Under this simple stove of rock was the fire, fed with huge twigs of the Arctic willow, it soon heated up. iThick slices of meat were then spread over it and a cake of frozen moss laid upon them so that all the pieces were covered. This they called cooking meat „with a blanket on", and it proved to foe a method that was as effective as it was simple, for the water which dripped out of the thawing moss prevented the meat from burning. The result was a dish midway between baked and boiled meat, heavenly mouthfuls of tender steak, which had retained all the juices.

It was a feast of gargantuan dimensions — camping joys that were new to me at that time! And undeniably it pricked one's appetite to have the pieces of meat passed over by the young woman, resplendant in the gleam of the crackling fire. She was really fascinating! The heat of the bright fire had made her fresh complexion ruddy, and her face, shiny with perspiration, was framed in hair that stood out from the hood of her pelisse in luxuriant, black folds.

Our host then told us the history of the whole district, and it deeply impressed us when he concluded by relating the story of kilivfak, the last of the mammoths, who according to the legend had fallen at the top of the mountain Kingigtoq, which we could just descry there from the mouth of the cave. It was late before we went to sleep.

Early next morning we took leave of our friends. We had not proceeded very far before the sun rose. At the same moment the face of the inland ice shone forth out of the frost mist and stood there, limitless, a magnificent but sombre barrier between the living country and the dead ice-desert.

The morning had been still until now when the light broke through. Then small white clouds grew out from the broad back of the ice, driving before the gale; they kept on growing, became big and heavy; we soon realised that a storm was brewing. The ice itself also changed;it looked as if it were bulging out, as if it broke into movement and began to come closer to us. Every crack and fissure became visible to the eye, and the colour of the ice was no longer whitishgrey,but

grey,butblue black; and there it stood, lowering in its immensity,
whilst the shadows of the clouds chased over it.

Manasse had long observed the threatening storm; then he turned quitely towards me and said: „Let us go on now as hard as we can, and get to the dwellings of men before the Föhn storm comes over us, for then it is not good to be near the inland ice."

II.

I will give you another picture.

Igjugarjuk is one of the far-famed shamans of the Caribou Eskimos. I am travelling together with him and his family, and live in a tent somewhere out in the Barren Grounds where the country is monotonous, flat and intricate to move about in. But today we have pitched our camp on some small hillocks, called \Tuglerutit or „the beads", and are now enjoying the change and the view. Just opposite us, on the far side of the swift Kazan River, stand two similar rows of beads and liven up the low land. One of the hillocks is called Oriarfik or „Spit Mountain", and Igjugarjuk tells me that it got this name because a dying musk-ox once spat blood on its summit.

We stand on one of the „beads" and watch the sun go down. We are amidst a tundra country —> a one-time hilly country that has been worn down to the ground after having for thousands and thousands of years been exposed to the tenacious, disintegrating power that lies in the alternation from cold to heat, of oozing water and of all that which can make even mountains crumble away.

Once these regions had their Ice Age — like Greenland now — and it was then that the mighty inland ice, the Keewatin Glacier, covered all the land that we are now travelling through. The ice has now rounded the heights, ground them away, ploughed out all softer formations and strewn boulders at random everywhere along its path. Now the primaeval rocks lie buried under deep layers of till, clay, sand and gravel; and out of all this only a few blackened rock pinnacles protrude.

An inhospitable land, with a winter that is bitingly cold, and
snowstorms that almost continuously sweep over the open plains.

A bare country, with periods of darkness and cold when all game
flees to milder climes.

And then the Caribou Eskimos tremble before the Master of the World, Hila, who is the only one who can summon the blue sky with the sun and the warm calm, the birds of the air, the salmon in the waters, and the caribou, who are man's blessing when they cover the plains.

Just at this moment we are amid this blessing: The mild season with its rich hunting is here. Unflensed caribou lie before the tent, and the youngst of Igjugarjuk's wives, Atqåralaoq is frying newlycaught, fat trout for us at a fire down by the river.

Igjugarjuk looks round at all this abundance and tells me of the last winter he has just come through. Every hunt failed, everything living disappeared from the surface of the earth. And they themselves lay starving with cold, without food, in the chilly snow huts, and saw how the small faces of the children wasted away whilst the strength of the hunters slowly ebbed.

In vain had Igjugarjuk, in every sort of weather, gone out into the great solitude to conjure up the Spirit of the Air. To no purpose had he, now whispering, now shouting, sent his magic prayers out into the darkness. But not even a thin little ptarmigan had he caught. The waters of the lakes were only cold emptiness wherever he broke the. ice to fish. And at last there seemed to be nothing left but the long sleep that comes like a caress to all those who can do no more.

But one night Kivkarjuk, the oldest of his wives, now withered and almost cast off, had a dream. She saw herself breaking the ice on a lake, Tahilugjuaq, which lay far beyond their own !hunting grounds. That dream was a message from Hila. And so she had gone in the middle of the nigtht with her adoptive son, Pingorqa. Exhausted with hunger and cold they battled their way forward against wind and blizzard, whispering magic words or brief, disconnected fragments of songs which they thought were capable of calling the fish that were to save the village.

After two days of hardships they came to the lake and, summoning their last remaining strength, chopped a hole in the thick ice. And at the same moment their luck turned. Trout after trout they spitted on their leisters until they had a whole sledge-full to drag home. And that is how an old woman saved the great shaman, his young wife and his children from starving to death.

This happened late in winter. Not long afterwards the caribou
appeared at their village. The winter privations were over. The time
of spring and summer abundance had come.

Igjugarjuk tells me all this, and his account gives colour to the landscape that I sit and gaze upon. A lake, forming a broad in the river, is bursting its ice; and already there is a shining crack crowded with swarms of aquatic birds. There are excitedly screaming terns and gulls, indolent, quacking ducks, swishing flocks of wild geese which throw themselves into the water among sobbing great northerndivers;

erndivers;and over on the banks long-legged cranes strut about
inspecting the pleasures of life on this summer day.

We hear the singing sound of melting ice and know that before
long millions of flowers will appear out of the cold tundra.

Igjugarjuk now speaks of caribou hunting in the old days, of the days when they had no firearms but had to build great fences of stone cairns, where the animals were driven in and shot down with bow and arrow from hiding places in the ground. Or they were driven out into the lakes at their crossing places and speared from kayaks.

The caribou came every spring from places far away; right down from distant forests they came trotting, making their way from south to north. A mysterious wanderlust gave them no rest but compelled them to set out in such mighty hordes that all the earth became alive.

First came the cows with young, with the young heifers behind them. And last of all the bulls. It was a motley procession, a swarm of animals that had not its like in the world! Caribou, caribou, caribou, slowly eating their way over the tundra. They had not yet changed their coats, and all the white necks and backs lay like living snowdrifts over the earth. So many were they, that it took weeks for them to pass a village.

But in the autumn, when they returned on their way southwards towards the forests, they looked quite different; then they were fat and slow, with shining, soft fur. And so densely packed were they in these herds that they had no room to flee from the hunters who assailed them. And the meat caches of the hunters were filled with winter supplies.

Yes, that was how life was in the tundra, rich in contrast for the life of man. Man met the bad with resignation, the good he took into his heart. But all men loved their country. One was not content to only breathe, says Igjugarjuk, one had to sing about it all. That was winy they had their stories and songs and the myths and legends of their ancestors.

We rise, and walks slowly down towards the tent, where Atqåralaoq awaits us with deer meat and salmon. The colours of the sun «.re still flaming over the horizon, and the whole country is redly ablaze.

„A young man has died somewhere, and now Hila is receiving
his soul into the eternal hunting grounds of the sky", says Igjugarjuk.

III.

The first of the landscapes which I have pictured here is, as

you will have understood, a country still in the Ice Age, with a nature that is exactly like what we had here in Europe during the last great Glacial Period; at that time, too, there were enormous polar steppes at the margin of the inland ice, of the same kind and character as those we find south of Northern Strömfjord and on the great alluvial plains behind Egedesminde.

The picture of the Barren Grounds, on the other hand, is taken
from a tundra period after the inland ice, which at that time also
covered this region, has disappeared.

As every one will be able to see, there is perfect congruence in the natural conditions, and a closer examination s'hows that something similar is the case with the animal world. Thus during my various expeditions it has fallen to my lot to experience both a Glacial Period and a Tundra Period — and in this manner I have obtained a firsthand impression of periods in the history of our world which, as far as Europe is concerned, are more than a hundred thousand years away.

And finally, in the Eskimos who were the object of all my travels I have met people who not only themselves lived in an Ice Age and a Tundra Age, tout as far as some tribes are concerned were even in the middle of a Stone or Bone Age culture corresponding to that prevailing in Europe twenty-five or thirty thousand years ago.

And so it is perhaps natural that now, after almost thirty years of study in the field, I am beginning to occupy myself with the connection there may posibly be between the Eskimos and the Glacial Age people in Europe.

In more than one respect a comparison of this kind is to me natural, as it is only since the Fifth Thule Expedition that we are really able to draw culture parallels between an Eskimo inland people and the inland hunters who lived in Europe during the Glacial Age and whose traces we now find in France, South Germany and Bohemia.

But our investigation may at once be limited to comprising only
a certain definite part of what we generally understand by the Glacial

For the „Glacial Period" in the wider sense is not a single, but four different ice periods, separated by four warmer, interglacial periods. And now it has been possible by means of radioactive measurementsto calculate that no less than a million years have elapsed since the beginning of the Glacial Period. As the latest scientific researches seem to indicate the precense of human beings as early as the end of the Tertiary, or at any rate from the beginning of the

Pleistocene, which thus represents the period of a million years already
referred to, it is obvious that one cannot speak of a Glacial Period
culture taken as one culture.

Up to the present time, no quite definite culture remains have been identified from the first two glacial periods and the interglacial period between them. Only in the Second, or „Great" Interglacial Period does the earlier Palaeolithic culture begin, and it continues with progressive developments throughout the Third Glacial Period, the Third Interglacial Period and even in the beginning of the Fourth and last Glacial Period. It is this early Palaeolithic culture which is associated with the Neanderthal man. From this period we have only a small number of types of implements, mostly of flint; but in character these recall the implements of the lowest races of the present day, i. e. Tasmanians and Australians. Thus there is nothing in this to occasion a comparison with the Arctic peoples. Real comparative periods only appear distinctly in the last great culture period during the last Glacial Age, i. e. Magdalenian, which has been approximately estimated to have occured between 25,000 and 12,000 years 18. C. It was a tundra period just like that now prevailing on the Barren Grounds, where the Caribou Eskimos live, and the fauna was' the same, with caribou and musk-oxen, a number of small rodents such as the marmot and the lemming, the ptarmigan, and various wading and webfooted birds. The only difference is that the last remains were also found of the great animals of the past: the mammoth and the woolly-haired rhinoceros.

But how about man? The finds that have been made, particularly in the south of France, give us a complete picture of him. We know that he had bone harpoons with one or two rows of barbs, leisters and bird-darts, throwing boards, or perhaps more correctly spear-throwers of bone or antler, „batons" which are not the adornments of chieftains but simply implements for straightening antler, primitive stone lamps, and sewing needles of bone which had been sawn into pieces with flint flakes. Otherwise, stone played only a subordinate part as a material; it was pronouncedly a Bone Age, just as among the Eskimos. And finally, in the great rock caves we find magnificently etched and painted pictures of mammoths, reindeer and other typical animals of the chase.

What conclusions can we then draw from these implements with
regard to the habits of man?

Men have been hunters just as the Caribou Eskimo are. And the
fact that among the Caribou Eskimos we find the same types of
implements — as for instance fish harpoons, leisters, throwing boards,

arrow straighteners or „batons", stone lamps, bone needles, and so on — justifies us in the belief that there has been no essential differencein their mode of living. The probability is that during the great migrations in spring and autumn they hunted the reindeer which, among the European Glacial Age people as among the Caribou Eskimos,was the principal source of food, „the daily meat". And, like the Caribou Eskimos, it is certain that they were not long in discoveringthat they could be caught most easily if they could be driven out into rivers and lakes. Presumably they had some sort of a craft to use in this hunting; not a highly developed kayak, it is true, but perhaps a simple skin boat such as the one Herodotus tells us about in Mesopotamia and still to be seen in out-of-the-way parts of Ireland and Wales. It is a very primitive type of boat, and it also occurs sporadically in Central Asia and among many North Americantribes.

In winter we way assume that they again settled by rivers and lakes, as the Caribou Eskimos do, and caught fish from the ice with their leister and harpoons. Under like conditions, ice-fishing of this sort has always 'been a necessary supplement to the winter stores which had to be collected in the form of dried meat, fat and tallow.

So much for their occupation.

If from the finds we also take the lamp, it furnishes proof that the conception of a home, with light, comfort and warmth, has not been foreign to them. There has been too great a tendency in modern thought to consider them wild and barbaric cave dwellers; but my life among primitive peoples in the Polar regions has taught me how extremely easily and naturally it occurs to one to build a shelter against wind and rain, or to screen the fire; and I therefore see nothing at all to indicate that the reindeer hunters of Europe, like the Eskimo of Alaska, have not erected huts of plaited willows, covered with turf or snow. Of course we shall never be able to prove that this sort of shelter ,has been used, but this does not lessen the probability that even in those early times man was familiar with self-built and suitable dwellings.

On the other hand, among the Eskimos, where natural conditions make it possible, we also find cliff caves used as temporary dwellings. I have found examples of them at Påkitsoq and Agpat in the Thule District and at Inman River west of Dolphin and Union Strait; and the manner in which these caves were arranged had a striking resemblance to some caves which I have had an opportunity of visiting and studying in the Pyrenees.

If we take the sewing needle, which twenty-five thousand years ago was made in the same manner as Eskimos I met near the magnetic pole still made them, this apparently trifling and insignificant invention opens up a perspective of tremendous dimensions!

One is inclined to clothe the Glacial Age man in merely a crude skin slung over the shoulder. But just think of all that adequacy of clothing, comfort, ability to move about in all kinds of weather, which as far as the Eskimos are concerned are associated with sinewthread and sewing needles; then one will understand what a culture factor the sewing needle has been to our European forefathers. There is no reason for doubting that they have had really suitable and well-sewn skin clothes just like other Polar peoples, who in this very domain have brought their art to a high stage of development.

Hitherto I have only occupied myself with the material culture. But if we now take the art which these Ice Age people have left us in the form or cave pictures and carved ornaments on their implements, these show that they apparently have had a relatively highly developed intellectuality. There is this peculiarity about their representations, that for the most part they picture the animals that provided them with clothing and food, and this may indicate that their purpose has been a magic one. When the Alaska Eskimos — and in fact other Eskimo tribes who occupy themselves with sculpture and ornamentation — adorn their implements with handsomely worked animal figures, it is with the idea that an animal prefers to be killed with weapons on which care has been expended; in other words, their art, too, has a magic purpose behind it.

There are also palaeolithic pictures which seem to represent religious mask-dances of a kind similar to those of the Eskimos. This lays bare a prospect of an intellectual development which is not to be neglected.

It may be thought that I overrate these reindeer hunters of the Glacial Age; but I would draw attention to the fact that the period which precedes their existence spans such an immense number of years, compared with the time that has elapsed since they gave way to other races, that it is not unreasonable to ascribe to them a comparatively rich culture.

As I have already said, the beginning of the Glacial Period is estimated as a million years ago; but even if we only give the early Palaeolithic culture an age of one hundred thousand years, the reindeerpeople have at any rate had 75,000 years for their development, whereas only twelve thousand years have passed since the Glacial Period. And just think what has taken place in these twelve thousand

years: to take merely a few examples: Egypt, Babylon, Greece and the Roman Empire were built and sank again into the dust! This at any rate gives a measure of time, even admitting that developments proceed with increasing rapidity as man advances.

Still, it remains a fact that in everything that has been adduced in the foregoing there are points of similarity between the modern Eskimos and Palaeolithic man: in the country, the animals, in fact in all the conditions of life which are manifested in technical inventions, in the implements used against terrestrial animals, and for fishing. And then finally in the intellectual culture — as we receive an impression of it by means of art and through everything that preceded it in the form of religion and magic.

If all this coincides, is it not credible that there was once a
direct connection between our own European Stone Age forefathers
and the Eskimos?

This is so far from being fantasy — to which I am beguiled as a consequence of my close association with Stone Age people •_— that I may cite in substantiation many contemporary men of science who have suspected such a connection. The English archaeologist Boyd Dawkins was the first to embark upon these thoughts, but he was merely accorded a shrug of the shoulders. But since then there have been other famous names who, independently of Dawkins, have stopped wonderingly before the same problem. To mention only a few, I might point to the French ethnographer Professor Rivet, who at the invitation of the Rask-Ørsted Fund recently held a series of lectures at the University of Copenhagen. Whereas others have dwelt upon the striking likeness between utensils, Rivet has among Palaeolithic artefacts found a parallel to the Eskimo „ring-and-pin" game, the ajagaq, the object of which is to throw up a carved bone into the air and catch it again with a stick, which must engage one of the many holes drilled in it. It is true that this is only a small thing, but neverthelees it is an example of how parallels may gradually accumulate into proof.

An equally remarkable conformity between Palaeolithic culture and the Polar peoples has quite recently been shown by Professor Gahs at Zagreb; he points out that various finds of heaped-up animal skulls and bones from Palaeolithic times correspond exactly to the sacrifices for good hunting of some Siberian and Eskimo tribes.

The Russian ethnographer, Professor Bogoras, of the Academy
at Leningrad, has also recently tried to establish a connection between
the people of the reindeer period and the Polar tribes of the present

day. He even believes that the taming of the reindeer goes right back
to the Glacial Age; this, however, is rather improbable.

Finally, to name one who is more closely associated with my work than all these, there is my old travelling companion Dr. Birket- Smith, who in his thesis on the Caribou Eskimos and their relation to the origin of the Eskimo culture emphasises just what I have formerly said, that the discovery of that peculiar and very old inland culture among Eskimos ought to occasion new and systematic investigations as to the possible connection between these cultures.

In continuation of Professor Hatt's earlier studies Birket-Smith asserts that the Circumpolar region, or more exactly expressed: the whole of the great northern region of Siberia and North America, at any rate as far south as the conifer forest stretches, has gone through a uniform culture development, the foundation of which is probably the same Palaeolithic culture with which we have been dealing here.

And finally, it is deserving of mention in this connection that one of the leading figures in modern ethnography, Father W. Schmidt, the director of the newly-opened museum of the Papal 'State, together with Professor Wilhelm Koppers in the University of Vienna, have arrived at a similar conclusion along quite other paths.

The question is now whether it can be said that the Eskimos actually descend from the reindeer hunters of the Magdalenian Period in Europe, or whether we must rest content to establish an association of cultures.

It may at once be stated that natural conditions are in no way an obstacle to the fact that the Eskimos could have walked right out from the Vezére Valley in South France or from the caves in the Pyrenees to the regions where they had then throughout twelve thousand years maintained their old culture. They may have gone through Siberia or across the Bering Strait to North America and Greenland; but this is not even the only possible route; for if we follow Wegener's theories of continental movements, France was still connected with North America during the Glacial period. At that time the northern Atlantic did not exist at all, and only later was there formed that fissure between Europe and North America which gradually grew into the Atlantic Ocean in its present size.

But as a matter of fact we do not really need to be content to establish that there have been natural possibilities of a migration from Europe to North America. We have in fact skeleton finds which may be taken to support the argument of direct descent. The so-called Chancelade man from the district around Dordogne in the south of

France shows an astonishing resemblance to the Eskimo type. And
in more recent times similar skeletons have been found in Vallée du
Roc, a little further north in the same district.

It is obvious that these finds support the possibility of an actual circumpolar migration and urge us to make continued and energetic investigations. But unfortunately the points referred to are as yet too isolated to permit at the present time of our building a theory upon them. And there is, too, the opposing fact that the European reindeer hunter, as we know him in the Cro-Magnon man, is not of Eskimo type.

It lies in the lap of the future whether some day it will be possible to establish a racial consanguinity between Eskimos and Glacial Period folk. Personally, I am inclined to believe it will. The progress we have made during the past few generations in our knowledge of the infancy of man warrants our anticipating surprises of a much more revolutionary character.

For the present, however, we shall keep to that indirect connection which appears in the culture; here we are on much safer ground. But even this, which to me appears to be so natural a consequence, has been subjected to doubt in various quarters.

Then why not try to bring together both believers and unbelievers all over the world to work in cooperation? For a tremendous task of this kind cannot be embarked upon by a single people. It will be necessary to get an international cooperation started. Besides Denmark, the countries that naturally would be able to take part in these expeditions are Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Soviet Republics, Japan, China, the United States, Canada and Newfoundland.

IV.

Briefly, the work would comprise a systematic investigation of
the northern races, with special reference to their connection with
Palaeolithic culture.

The plan for this work has been thought out in collaboration with Dr. Birket-Smith; it has also been discussed with Inspector Thomas Thomsen, Keeper of the Ethnographic Section of the National Museum, the archaeologist Dr. Therkel Mathiassen and the State Geologist Dr. V. Nordmann. I, however, bear the responsibility for the form which the plan has now assumed and for the various theories and points of view which have been here presented.

It should be a main rule of the plan that each country be responsible

for that part of the work which falls within its political area. By such
an arrangement the work would be apportioned as follows:

'For Canada, there are particularly the regions east of Hudson
Bay, especially the Labrador Peninsula — a vast and quite uncultivated
field for Eskimo archaeology.

For the United States there is Alaska, where the Eskimo culture has met not only North Asiatic but at least two widely different Indian forms of culture, and where conditions are so intricate that they will require a most comprehensive investigation. Alaska is the bridge beetwen the Old and the New World, and every influence from Siberia to North America has passed through that region.

Newfoundland's work will lie in the northeastern of the Labrador coast and in Newfoundland itself, where the now extinct Beothuk Indians represent an element which displays a puzzling association with the Eskimos and Indians of Canada.

In northeast Asia live a number af races that are generally recognized as being an especially ancient part of the population, the so-called Palae-Asiatics or Americanoids, i. e. Ainu in northern Japan, Gilyak by the River 'Amur, Kamchadal, Koryak, Yukagir and Chukchi further north. Their ethnography is on the whole particularly well known through the works of Russian investigators such as Bogoras, Jochelson and Sternberg; practically nothing however is known of their previous history. -This is the more regrettable in that there are undoubtedly many various threads connecting their culture with the culture of the Eskimo.

An archaeological exploration of these regions will therefore be
of the very greatest importance, principally on Russian soil, but to
some extent on Japanese too (Sakhalin, the Kurills, Yeso).

With regard to the Russian investigations I would especially indicate two places; first: the north coast of Siberia between East Cape and the mouth of the Kolyma, where there are innumerable old ruins; secondly; the east coast between Kamchatka and the River Amur, which is now inhabited by Reindeer Nomads, but which, possibly, was formerly inhabited by hunters who formed a connecting link between the Koryak and the Gilyak.

And finally, there is in Asia a great field for Palaeolithic investigation. Important Palaeolithic finds have been made at Yenisei and many other places, and now also in Mongolia. There would seem to be a possibility here of cooperation partly with China and especially with Sweden, through her Chinese connections (Gunnar Anderson and Sven Hedin).

In Europe, of course, conditions are essentially otherwise than

in the coutries named, because extensive and comprehensive investigationshave alreeady been made and are still in progress. We now know that offshoots of the Palaeolithic culture were the foundation of the Stone Age in Scandinavia (the Mullerup Culture in Denmark and the corresponding strata in Sweden and Norway). In this connectionthe greatest interest is attached to the association which seems to be traceable between this Stone Age, partly of Palaeolithic character as it is, and the Lapp culture of the Viking period in Finmarken.This problem, so closely bound up with the question of the so-called Skolte-Lapps on the Kola Peninsula and, in fact, the whole problem of the Polar peoples of the Old World, already has the attentionaf the (Norwegian Institute of Comparative Culture Research. Here, then, appear rich possibilities of cooperation.

In the Central and Southern European countries, where systematic, Palaeolithic investigations are already being made, it will be of interest to have an opportunity of making expeditionary excursions, as these may strengthen the conclusion based on research in the Polar regions.

It may also be pointed out that North Africa has been very little examined in relation to its connection with the Palaeolithic culture of South Europe. There is no doubt whatever that excavations there will give new results.

Nor must we be blind to what a revision of the geological surveys might mean. For it is obvious that thorough and correct knowledge of the natural conditions under which the culture has originated and developed will always play a great part in the study of sites.

I am quite well aware that a task like this cannot be brought to realisation in the twinkling of an eye. For instance, I may recall that it was in 1909 that I first presented plans for the Fifth Thule Expedition, which I only succeeded in starting in 1921. I have therefore no hesitation in putting this one forward. It is, however, my firm conviction that one day there will be possible a great cooperative undertaking of this kind, and that then this plan will be put into operation.

It is my intention to approach the Foreign Office and request it to send.out this project to the countries which are named in it and which must be presumed to be particularly interested. As soon as the replies have been received a committee will be formed, consisting of a representative for each country together with those collaborators in the making of this plan who may wish to take part in the eventual

inauguration of is. That committee will then decide upon the details
of the metod of working.

To me, no science affects us so much as that which has to do with man and man's own past. And I consider it natural that the initiative in making an international Stone Age investigation should come from Denmark; for we have great traditions in the domain of prehistoric archaeology in Scandinavia, and especially in Denmark.

It was a Dane, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, who first taught the world to differentiate between a Stone Age, a Bronze Age and an Iron Age. And it was his successors Worsaae and Sophus Müller, who carried this chronological system further, at the same time drawing attention to the fact that in the Mediterranean countries we have the ever-flowing culture spring that has fructified the Scandinavian

This ability to see the connection between various forms of culture
has always been the strength of Scandinavian archaeology and
the much younger ethnography.

It might also be mentioned that the problems of the Eskimo culture were first subjected to systematic research by Danish scientists. Do not let us forget that is was Rink who first compared Eskimo and Indian culture, and that Gustav Holm was the first, in his book on the Angmagssalik, to give a scientific description of a newlydiscovered, primitive Eskimo tribe.

This, then, must be a sufficient reason why the suggestion of a complete investigation of the most important of the questions attaching to the problem: Eskimos and Stone Age Peoples, should come from Denmark.

November 1929.