Eskimos You Never Knew Research Paper

Facts About Eskimos You Never Knew.

Eskimos are indigenous people who inhabit the northern circular region of eastern Siberia, Canada, across Alaska and Greenland. They are popularly called snowmen. The term ‘Eskimo’ is however taught to be slightly racist and they consider it an insult. The accepted term that many of them use is ‘Inuit’ with an individual member called ‘Inuk.’ The term may be misleading since Inuit people belong to Yupik and Inupiat, cultural groups. There are approximately 80000 Eskimos living around the world. The following are some interesting facts about Eskimos.

Eskimo Kiss

The Inuit do not rub noses to kiss as often thought of by many people. This gesture is however used by children, parents and couples as a type of intimate greeting. The Inuit do not rub noses, but they sniff each other’s hair and cheeks. This act is called ‘kunik.’ However, it’s not done in public as it is considered intimate.

They Do Not Have Hundreds of Words for Snow

He observed that they referred to snow quite often. The misconception of hundred words for snow is, however, a misunderstanding of the Inuit sentence structure. The Inuit used precise terms to describe something. An example is ‘piegnartoq’ which meant ‘the snow that’s good for sled driving’ and ‘aqilokop’ to mean ‘softly falling snow.’ Franz Boaz forgot to note that, Inuit language has several words stringing into one thus the impression that the whole phrase is one word. There are only three root words that mean snow in the Inuit