The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studiesWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
America -- Antiquities; Atlantis (Legendary place); Ethnology -- America; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
In any process of aggression of the native American race on the older
area of the Eskimo, some intermixture of blood would naturally follow.
The slaughter of the males in battle, and the capture of women and
children, everywhere leads to a like result; and this seems the simplest
solution of the problem of the southern brachycephalic, and the northern
dolichocephalic type of head among native American races. When the sites
of the ancient colonies of Greenland were rediscovered and visited by
the Danes, they imagined they could recognise in the physiognomy of some
of the Eskimo who still people the shores of Davis Straits, traces of
admixture between the old native and the Scandinavian or Icelandic
blood. Of the Greenland colonies the Eskimo had perpetuated many
traditions, referring to the colonists under the native name of
_Kablunet_. But of the language that had been spoken among them for
centuries, the fact is highly significant that the word _Kona_, used by
them as a synonym for woman, is the only clearly recognised trace. This
is worthy of note, in considering the distinctive character of the
Eskimo language, and its comparison with the Indian languages of the
North American continent. It has the feature common to nearly all the
native languages of the continent north of the Mexican Gulf in the
composite character of its words; so that an Eskimo verb may furnish the
equivalent to a whole sentence in other tongues. But what is specially
noteworthy is that, while the Huron-Iroquois, the Algonkin, and other
Indian families of languages have multiplied widely dissimilar dialects,
Dr. Henry Rink has shown that the Eskimo dialects of Greenland or
Labrador differ slightly from those of Behring Strait; and the congeners
of the American Eskimo, who have overflowed into the Aleutian Islands,
and taken possession of the north-eastern region of Asia, perpetuate
there nearly allied dialects of the parent tongue.[8] The Alaskan and
the Tshugazzi peninsulas are in part peopled by Eskimo; the Konegan of
Kudjak Island belong to the same stock; and all the dialects spoken in
the Aleutian Islands, the supposed highway from Asia to America, betray
in like manner the closest affinities to the Arctic Mongolidæ of the New
World. They thus appear not only to be contributions from the New World
to the Old, but to be of recent introduction there. If the cave-dwellers
of Europe’s palæolithic era found their way as has been suggested, in
some vastly remote age, either by an eastern or a western route to the
later home of the Arctic Eskimo, it is in comparatively modern centuries
that the tide of migration has set westward across the Behring Strait,
and by the Aleutian Islands, into Asia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account