Materials. We have seen how the life of the Caribou Eskimos has been like an undaunted struggle against distances, against climate and against the scarcity of food, and how, in that struggle, they have been victorious over nature by bending to it while undergoing a far-reaching process of adaptation. Their life is founded upon a primitive technology which, in itself, is very greatly dependent upon what their surroundings can yield and what they require. The local material sets its stamp upon the technique and, even if the experiment has only been partly successful, there is thus a sound idea behind Vidal de la Blache's cartographical exhibition of the various environment-types of the world.[1]
In all their doings the Eskimos are a sober race, and it is obvious that one of the causes of this psychological peculiarity is to be found in nature, which nearly compels people to concentrate their lives upon the satisfying of only the most elementary requirements. A consideration of the means with which they have succeeded in helping themselves provides a salutory lesson on the scope of human energy. But on the other hand they would not be human — and especially primitively human — if they had not purchased this result at the expense of a onesidedness which betrays their limitations. Eskimo culture as a whole is incredibly onesided — or specialised, to use a nicer word — and, even in material culture, which signifies the pinnacle of its achievement, a onesidedness is displayed that is not entirely due to environment and tradition, but almost certainly to psychological inertia too.
Hardly anyone will venture to assert that man is logical, and pri mitive people have this quality least of all. "Wer einfach annimt, dass das Ergebniss der materiellen Entwickelung einer Art Parallelogramm der Kräfte zwischen den praktischen Zwecken und den vorhandenen Mitteln entsprechen muss ... wird nie das Rechte treffen und immer aufs neue vor Unbegreiflichkeiten stehen".[2] Why do not the Coast
