7
As to the age of the Thule culture, we can only say that in Repulse Bay it seems to go back to a time when the sea was 10 to 13 metres higher than it is now, and to have lasted at any rate until the sea was about 5 metres higher than now. On the coast south of Repulse Bay and on Melville Peninsula there are no remains of the Thule culture at a lower level than 6 metres above sea level, and at several places a land rise of about 10 metres since the building of the settlements must be assumed. On Southampton Island these ruins, as might have been expected, extend further down — in the northern part at any rate to three or four metres above sea level; here the oldest house ruins, which from a culture point of view are contemporary with Naujan, are however 12 metres above the sea. At Ponds Inlet we find the lowest ruins about four metres above sea level, and in the younger portion of the Qilalukan find there is something which might indicate contact with Europeans, which brings us up to about a. d. 1600. The Thule find gives no geological dating; at Malerualik a rise of the land of from 10 to 15 metres is probable. We can thus say that the Thule culture prevailed in the Central Eskimo territory from the time when the land lay at least ten metres lower than it lies now, until towards the first appearance of Europeans in the country; it seems to have lasted longest in northern Baffin Land, where we also have transitional finds which bring us into the modern culture, apart from Southampton Island of course. Round about Repulse Bay it seems to have disappeared much earlier. But what these ten or fifteen metres signify in time we know nothing of; if the rising of the land is proceeding at the same rate as in Northern Scandinavia, it will mean over a thousand years. Of this, however, we know nothing as yet. And furthermore, it must be realised that the land may well have risen at different speeds in different places, so that 10 metres in Repulse Bay need not correspond in time to 10 metres at Ponds Inlet or on King William's Land. It is not possible now, however, to approach nearer to the age of the Thule culture in positive time reckoning.
