Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/347

Rh of early man's advancement are only within those temperate areas or elevations where neither heat nor cold was excessive, and where the food-quest was not exhausting.

Interesting here also is it to note the length of day in culture areas, especially for out-of-door men. The following table gives nearly enough the duration of the longest and of the shortest day for the different latitudes:

The Western Hemisphere offers the best field for studying culture areas and primitive life in relation to sex. The two extremities furnish a striking contrast between a sterile and a bi-sexual area. In Fuegia, with climate like that of Labrador, the conditions of living are such that beyond merely holding their own there is little to uplift either men or women.

On the contrary, along the arctic border are the cunning Eskimo, living in an environment that is both virile and feminal; but it is solely zootechnic. There the women are housekeepers, tanners, clothiers and embroiderers.

The men have the sinew-backed bow, the retrieving harpoon, and the skin kaiak, in each of which you see the maximum result of skill with the minimum of material. During the long winter the æsthetic faculty was exercised in carving and etching upon hard animal tissues. The underground ceremonial house and the snow dome are models of construction. Dogs were traction beasts, rapid transit over snow and ice was installed; harness, sleds of uniform width, economic food and packing sharpened the wits. The boundaries of the environment rich in animal life seemed unlimited, so that many hundreds of miles of shore country were exploited by a people speaking the same language. Inland, about the Yukon drainage, women were among the most forlorn pack beasts and slaves on earth.

Eastward from the Rockies and throughout Alaska is the birch-tree country, quite poorly furnished for men, far better for men than women. The snow-shoe is at home here, and also the birch-bark canoe. Here