This theory, however, is now abandoned. The resemblance
in height and colour is only superficial, and a more
careful view of the physical make-up of the Eskimo shows
him to resemble the other races of America far more
closely than he resembles those of Asia. A distinguished
American historian, John Fiske, believed that the Eskimos
are the last remnants of the ancient cave-men who in the
Stone Age inhabited all the northern parts of Europe.
Fiske's theory is that at this remote period continuous
land stretched by way of Iceland and Greenland from Europe
to America, and that by this means the race of cave-men
was able to extend itself all the way from Norway and
Sweden to the northern coasts of America. In support of
this view he points to the strangely ingenious and artistic
drawings of the Eskimos. These drawings are made on ivory
and bone, and are so like the ancient bone-pictures found
among the relics of the cave-men of Europe that they can
scarcely be distinguished.
The theory is only a conjecture. It is certain that at
one time the Eskimo race extended much farther south than
it did when the white men came to America; in earlier
days there were Eskimos far south of Hudson Bay, and
perhaps even south of the Great Lakes.
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