Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/261

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CHAP. VII.]
RELATION TO THE ESKIMOS.
233

to the same age and race this difference could hardly have occurred. This difference in range implies, as we have already observed, that the River-drift men belong to the southern group of Mammalia, while the Cave-men must be classified with the reindeer, the musk sheep, and other northern animals. After taking these facts into account, they may be referred either to two distinct races, or to two sections of the same race which found their way into Europe at widely different times; the River-drift men being of far higher antiquity in Europe, and probably having lived for countless generations before the arrival of the Cave-men and the appearance of the higher culture.

We are without a clue to the ethnology of the River-drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct at the present time as the woolly rhinoceros or the cave-bear; but the discoveries of the last twenty years have tended to confirm the identificatioQ of the Cave-man with the Eskimos.

Relation to the Eskimos.

On passing under review the manners and customs of all the savage tribes known to modern ethnology, there is only one people[1] with whom the Cave-men are intimately connected, in their manners and customs, in their art, and in their implements and weapons. The Eskimos range at the present time from Greenland on the east, along the shores of the Arctic Sea, as far to the west as the Straits of Behring,[2] inhabiting a narrow littoral strip of country, and living by hunting, fishing,

  1. This question is discussed also in Chapter IX. of my work on Cave-hunting.
  2. It appears also from the letters recently sent home by Professor Nordenskiold that they inhabit the shores of North-Eastem Siberia.