> So was the flexable hull a design feature or was it a result of them using
> the only materials available to them? {:o)

Time for a newby to chime in. I have been reading this board for a few weeks, and really enjoy the good advice and good humour.

As for the baidarka, it was clearly a design feature--they used ivory "bearings" to enhance the flexibility.

I found it interesting that the Aleut's arms were so massively muscular that the resulting "rugosity" on the bones is the greatest ever recorded in human beings. Contemporaneous Russian arms were called "pipe stems" in comparison. They don't mention the state of their legs!

One more interesting bit from the article: a 19th century Russian ethnologist recorded an Aleut messenger who traveled 135 miles on the open ocean in about 27 hours (then died from a "chest hemmorhage" soon after arriving).