In this icy Alaska Arctic Circle, severe cold is synonymous with it.
Facing the cold wind, stepping on the snow, the vast land, wrapped in silver. In the distance, you can see seven or eight domed houses made of snow bricks, independent of this world.
The man of the house went out hunting, and the wife and daughter sewed gloves and hats from deerskin inside.
This is a small tribe of Inuit.
The world has now entered a period of high moral civilization, tribal civilization has withdrawn from the stage of history, but in the coldest Arctic on earth, there is still a group of tribes that live on fishing, where a group of Eskimos live.
The Eskimos were born thousands of years ago, the last migratory army of mankind, who set out from Asia to migrate across the Bering Strait to the hinterland of the Americas, and were intercepted and hunted down by the American Indians on the way. They fought and retreated, and eventually managed to retreat to the Arctic Circle.
The Indians thought they would freeze to death in the cold snow and stopped pursuing them. Unexpectedly, the Eskimos miraculously survived in the Arctic Circle.
The Inuit were the Eskimos. The word "Eskimo" is derived from "eskimantik", which means "a person who eats raw meat". The Eskimos are what the Indians of the Labrador Peninsula of Canada call them, with a pejorative connotation, so they prefer to call themselves "Inuit", which means "person".
They are found in and around the Arctic Circle from Siberia to Alaska to Greenland, living in Greenland, the United States, Canada and Russia, and are authentic yellows. The physical characteristics are similar to those of North Asians, the skin is mostly light yellow-brown, the hair is thick and black, the eyes are brown, the face is wide and flat, and the bridge of the nose is straight and long and narrow. However, due to their long-term life in extremely cold places, the appearance of the Inuit gradually changed, although they were still yellow, but unlike normal Asians, their bodies were short but strong, their eyes were thin and small, and they had a lot of fat. Let them better adapt to the living environment of the extremely cold place and better resist the cold.
The Arctic Circle has cold weather and harsh living environment, but it is rich in marine resources. The Inuit survived thanks to their unique hunting methods.
They settle down on the coast, sometimes hunting under ice floes, mainly sharks, narwhals, cod, etc.; sometimes hunting white bears, elk, polar foxes and so on on the shore.
These animals are very rare in the eyes of modern people, but in the eyes of the Inuit people, they are just their daily food.
In cold weather, the Inuit had no way to cook raw meat, and in their minds, cooking meat was wasting food, so they ate raw meat for three meals a day.
Eating meat instead of vegetables and fruits on a regular basis can cause people to suffer from scurvy and most often lose their lives. For example, Magellan's fleet.
But inuit never suffered from scurvy because they didn't eat fruits and vegetables. This is because the Inuit not only like to eat raw meat, but also like to eat all kinds of offal of animals, which are rich in vitamins.
They also have a very special kind of food that they serve when their guests come. The food required more than 100 Arctic puffins to be stuffed into the seal's stomach, sealed in the seal's mouth, buried in the Arctic permafrost, and dug up and eaten two years later.
The Inuit would leave behind the fur of the animals they had hunted and make clothes to protect them from the cold.
After a day's work, they would return to their dwellings, usually snow-brick domed igloos, some of which lived in stone houses or mud blocks, and in the summer they lived in tents made of animal skins.
Inuit marriages were not for love, but for survival.
The number of tribes is small, and they are basically married by close relatives, and for a long time, the Inuit people find that the marriage of close relatives will increase the chance of having problematic children.
In order to obtain more different genes, increase the genetic diversity of the tribe, and increase the survival rate of future generations, the women of the tribe and the tribe will move around each other and return to their tribe after a period of time. If tourists come over, the Inuit will also warmly welcome and let the wife treat them well.
Everything the Inuit do is for the better survival, and living is the most important thing.
A small tribe that wants to thrive and develop in such a harsh environment of the Arctic Circle must have a trade-off.
These traditions, which seem inconceivable to us, are the best ways the Inuit have found for generations to adapt to the environment.
What do you think about that?