ess than -15 deg.C. (or
5 deg.F.), as at the Greenland village of Etah on Smith's Sound and the
Siberian town of Verkhoyansk. Here the ground is covered with, ice or
snow most of the year, and permanently frozen below the surface. Animal
and plant life are reduced to a minimum on the land, so that man, with
every poleward advance of his thin-strung settlements, is forced more
and more to rely on the sea for his food. Hence he places his villages
on narrow strips of coast, as do the Norse of Finmarken, the Eskimo and
the Tunguse inhabiting the Arctic rim of Asia. Products of marine
animals make the basis of his domestic economy. Farther inland, which
means farther south, all tribes live by hunting and fishing. The
Eurasian Hyperboreans find additional subsistence in their reindeer
herds, which they pasture on the starchy lichen (Cladonia rangiferina)
of the tundra. [See maps pages 103, 153.]

[Sidenote: Similarity of cultural development.]

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.

Owing to the inexorable restriction of their natural resources, contact
with European commerce has impoverished the Hyperborean natives. It has
caused the rapid and ruthless exploitation of their meager resources,
which means eventual starvation. So long as the Ostyaks, before the
coming of the Russians, were sole masters of th