Note 1433 — Chapter XVII · —The Influence Of Climate

Though these Arctic folk are sprung from diverse race stocks, close vicinal location around an enclosed sea has produced some degree of blood relationship. But whatever their origins, the harsh conditions of their life have imposed upon them all a similar civilization. All population is sparse and more or less nomadic, since agriculture alone roots settlement. They have the same food, the same clothing, the same types of summer and winter dwellings, whether it is the earth hut of the Eskimo or of the coast Lapp, the Siberian Yukagirs of the Kolima River, or the Samoyedes of northeastern Russia.1433 The spur of necessity has aroused their ingenuity to a degree found nowhere in the drowsy Tropics of Africa. Dread of cold led the Yakuts of the Lena Valley to glaze the windows of their huts with slabs of ice, which are better nonconductors of heat and cold, and can be made more perfectly air-tight than glass. Hence these windows have been adopted by Russian colonists. The Eskimo devised the oil lamp, an invention found nowhere else in primitive America, and fishing tackle so perfect that white men coming to fish in Arctic waters found it superior to their own.