The Eskimos were once called "the loneliest people." 14,000 years ago, the Eskimos migrated from Asia through two great migrations into the Arctic and became a mysterious ethnic group in the polar regions. In fact, to say that the Eskimos are a "people" is somewhat far-fetched. Today's Eskimos are mainly distributed in 8 countries: Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland, with a combined resident population of 4 million. If you happen to meet an Eskimo today, you may not recognize them. Scientists speculate that the ancestors of the Eskimos came from northern China. Yellow skin and black hair make them look very much like the Mongol race, shorter siblings are more Asian than American Indians, and their personalities also have the cheerful enthusiasm, hospitality and simplicity of the Chinese nation.
This is a perennial struggle in harsh environments, often using ice as a house, animal skins as clothing, raw meat as food, and facing months of dark nights, with minimum temperatures of -70 °C during the polar night. Before modern times, they had no money, no commodities, and simple writing. The survival and reproduction of the Eskimos to this day is indeed a great miracle in human history.
01
Distant "prejudice"
As you may know, there is a well-known down jacket brand in the United States called "Eskimo". The brand has a hooded coat, the Parka, whose design inspiration dates back to World War II, when the U.S. Air Force made it from the Eskimo winter coat, which bomber pilots wore through the smoke and flames.
The natural abundance of polar animal fur was the main covering material for the Eskimos. Clothes are mostly made of reindeer skins, bear skins, fox skins, seal skins, wolf skins and other animal furs as raw materials, which can help humans resist the cold of the Arctic to the greatest extent. A woman's coat is usually larger than a man's and can be used to conceive a baby.
In the summer, coats are spread on skeletons as part of the materials for the house. In winter, they tear down their summer houses and take off their coats to wear.
The most important impression of the Eskimos we know today is "Ru Mao drinking blood". The word "Eskimo" itself has the meaning of "a man who eats raw meat." Meat makes up 90% of their diet, and seals, whales and fish are the main food sources. These animals have a lot of fat on them, which can provide plenty of calories. Reindeer, ducks, geese and quail are also regulars at the table.
Hunting is their traditional way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation. The Eskimos of northern Greenland hunt seals at the turn of winter and summer, mainly birding and fishing from June to August, and reindeer in September; the Eskimos, who live in the northern tip of Alaska, hunt seals throughout the year, reindeer at the turn of winter and summer, and whaling in April and May.
Due to the lack of technology and backward civilization, there is basically no "cooking" in their traditional food culture. For prey they catch, they will eat them raw while they still have body temperature. Fuel in the Arctic is precious, and using fuel for cooking is indeed a waste of living resources. They also process the hunted animals into pieces of meat, which are marinated in whale oil, which can be preserved for years.
Of course, meat is not the whole ingredient. In summer, they collect bird eggs, berries and plant roots. Since the local sea waters froze for an average of more than 9 months, almost all of the Eskimos' survival supplies had to be brought by plane, and fresh produce was bound to be scarce, costing $14 for a red pepper.
△ Ice fishing
The Eskimos, who consume a lot of fat every day, are undoubtedly contrary to the modern concept of health. It was once believed that they rarely suffer from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension and cancer, and their blood lipids are almost always within the normal range. In fact, this is a distant "prejudice".
For more than 6,000 years, they had lived on the northern permafrost and had little contact with the rest of the world except for the occasional Raid by the Indians. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that their daily lives, diet and health were recorded.
Early survey reports described Eskimos as "young and pretty" and "athletic-loving," but they age quickly, "rare for men and women over the age of 60."
Scientific studies have shown that Eskimos have similar CAD (coronary artery disease) prevalence to populations elsewhere on Earth; their life expectancy is about 10 years shorter than that of the Danish population, and the overall mortality rate from cerebrovascular stroke is twice that of other populations. The reason why they are relatively able to slow down the harm of fat is because of the role of "polyunsaturated fatty acids" contained in deep-sea fish in food.
In addition to eating habits, the world is also amazed by their place of residence - "igloo". Accustomed to the extreme cold conditions, they will build dome igloos with snow bricks on coastal ice floes in winter.
△ The Eskimos would build dome igloos out of snow bricks
For an Eskimo, it is very easy to build an igloo, a small igloo that can accommodate two people can be built in a few hours; a medium-sized igloo can accommodate two families, with a longer service life, and the construction time is about 5 hours; large igloos are usually not used for individual homes, but for collective activities or celebrations of festivals, and are built in a day.
In addition to igloos, they can also live in houses of stone or dirt blocks, and in the summer they can set up tents with animal bones, turf and wooden blocks.
However, modern technology and civilization, like the melting ice of global warming, irreversibly affect the life circle of the Eskimos, and many Eskimos will no longer build igloos. This is an obvious historical necessity: today, there are only about 150,000 real Eskimos, and their lives are not what they used to be, and they are quite modern.
02
The devouring of modernity
Modernization, for the vast majority of the nation, is a blessing, but for the Eskimos it is a signal of national peril.
The 1922 documentary Nanuk of the North was perhaps the last human record of the original life of the Eskimo. The film chronicles the daily life of the Eskimo leader Nanuk family near the Arctic Circle in Quebec, Canada, from August 1920 to August 1921, including trading with whites, catching fish, hunting walruses and seals, cooking on fire, and building an igloo.
In the mixed evaluations, the world holds a similar sigh about the ethnic group presented in the film: there is still such a place on the earth, and the difficult and difficult environment has given birth to such a remarkable and peculiar nation.
Stills from "Nanook of the North."
And in the midst of the wave of modern civilization, a new generation of Eskimos had to start thinking about their present and future. The wheel of history is moving from industrial civilization to scientific civilization, but mankind has paid a cruel price in the expansion of the city.
In the 1920s and 1970s, governments expanded their control over the Eskimos and their territories. Beginning around the 1950s, with the incorporation of Newfoundland and Labrador into the Canadian Confederation, the Canadian government began to recover from World War II and began to develop and build the northern part of the country, planning to exert greater control over the traditional Eskimo areas.
For the purpose of economic development, Canadians built roads, developed mineral and timber resources, and modern civilized countries invested a lot of infrastructure into that extremely cold land, and provided skills training for modern society for the Eskimos.
These economic activities did help the Eskimos to a certain extent to transition to modern civilized society. They began to embrace a new way of life, gradually embracing the transformation of foreign civilizations. The scattered Eskimos were concentrated to form new towns and cities. During this period, about 85% of Eskimos were urbanized and no longer followed the old nomadic life.
But inevitably, they became more and more dependent on the outside world and gradually broke away from the traditional safari life. This is a transformation of traditional civilization, but also a kind of destruction.
In the turbulent process of modern capitalist transformation, the government is too eager to replace the traditional Eskimo way of life with a completely industrialized civilization, and at the same time, some extreme behaviors have been derived, such as forcing them to stay away from traditional hunting tools, and religious education to squeeze out traditional education.
With the end of large-scale infrastructure activities, the local job market has also been overturned and devastated. There were only a few jobs left in the Eskimo settlements, and most Eskimos had to rely on social assistance to live desperately.
The weakening of the economic situation of production and the shrinking of traditional civilization have stimulated a large number of social problems. Problems such as family divisions, sexual abuse, alcoholism and the various diseases they produce, which are darker than the cold polar night, envelop the Eskimo community.
To this day, we hear a large number of suicides committed by Indigenous Canadians on the news. Suicide is one of the most common causes of death among the Eskimo community. Statistics from 2010 show that the suicide rate among young people in the Eskimo is 13 times higher than the Canadian average.
03
Demise and reflection
Since coming to this planet, human beings have always faced two major relationships: the relationship between people and people; the relationship between people and nature. The Eskimos appear to be the exception in this long-standing tug-of-war. They are not at odds with the tide of modernization, nor are they stubbornly stubborn, but in a way that responds absolutely to nature, in a gesture of even sacrifice, they remind and warn mankind that this loneliest people will lead by example and live forever. What is endangered is ecology and life, but historical and civilization symbols have been preserved as a result.
Some people joke that "Eskimo" has the consonant meaning of "love death and loneliness", which is not a sign of romanticism. For example, this group has a special custom that is lesser known: Eskimo kissing. When they rub their noses against each other, they are actually sniffing each other's hair and cheeks, even if the two have not seen each other for a long time, they can quickly recall the smell. Preserving taste to convey emotion, like the eternal cold way of life, leaves the Eskimos forever in the sea of human history. Finally, most of the ancient peoples of the Arctic Circle do not want to be called "Eskimos", a term first called by the Indians with a pejorative connotation. They prefer to call themselves "Inuit" or "Inuit" people, which means "real people".