The Fourth World: Life on the Ice

For five thousand years, the Eskimos, or Inuit, have survived in one of the harshest environments in the world, the Arctic. Here, at the top of the world, hardship and suffering go hand in hand with fortitude and courage. A mere fifty years ago, starvation, cannibalism and female infanticide were as much a part of their lives as hamburgers and electronic arcade games are today.This transition from Stone Age to Space Age living, and its impli-cations for the future, has passed almost unnoticed in the south. Although hundreds of books have been written about the Arctic, the majority allude to the courage of explorers, and by inference to that of their authors, who have consistently portrayed the Eskimo as 'Nanook of the North', the happy hunter living with his family and a litter of husky puppies in an igloo. The Fourth World is an attempt to destroy this out?dated image.Today, the old hunting culture is threatened by hydro-electric plants, oil pipelines, offshore oil rigs, western consumer goods and fall-out from military and political manoeuvering. In the next decade, and during the early years of the twenty-first century, industrial man will build new towns, roads, railways and airports in the frozen wastelands. Crops will be grown where previously there was only ice and snow. Ships, escorted by nuclear icebreakers, will regularly ply the Northwest and Northeast Passages, for centuries the dream of European merchants. On the polar ice cap, oil men will drill to a depth of 20,000 feet, while beneath them nuclear submarines bristling with missiles patrol the ocean darkness.If, in the future, the Arctic is to be developed responsibly, it is important to review the effects on Eskimo culture of the developed world. This can be achieved only by studying and understanding the reasons for ancient Eskimo customs. To this end, Part One traces the Eskimo migrations from Siberia to Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and from the reports of the earliest travellers from the 'civilised' world shows how the Eskimos lived, and pieces together the fundamental reasons for their ability to survive.