[Paddlewise] Wasp Waist Inuit kayaks

Serious students of Inuit watercraft must be getting a huge chuckle out of 
the "Evolution" kayak discussion the idea pre-dating the theft of North 
America from its native peoples. The first "wasp waisted" (or as their 
discoverer, Professor "Pingo" Klohr, called them Monroe-form kayaks) was 
found in the Koksok pingo in July of 1950 months  before NASA scientists 
claimed to have discovered it. The perfectly preserved framework of this 
unique variant of the Inuit Crotch Dirigible shed new light into how the 
Inuit were able to discover so much of the "new world" as they called 
Europe. As you all know, the failure of the Inuit to document their 
discoveries with maps with dragons and such eventually led to Europeans 
claiming credit for discovering the "New World" as they called North 
America. The supersonic Crotch-Dirigible proved conclusively that the Inuit 
could travel great distances rapidly. Percy Stiles believes that sightings 
of these craft during the Dark Ages may have led to the increased fear of 
witches especially since so many Inuit explorers traveled with cats to 
provide guaranteed upright landings

This is old stuff so I won't belabor it here.

The Monroe-form crotch dirigible suggested to Professor Klohr and others 
that the Inuit had supersonic flight and the pinch waist provided a constant 
section that made such flight possible even with the relatively low power 
output of gaseous caribou paunch. In 1962 Professor Armand Shackleford 
contested the theory saying that the Inuit structures would not withstand 
the stresses of supersonic flight but subsequent finite analysis of these 
amazing structures revealed that the flexible framework absorbed supersonic 
shocks much as the skin kayak frame absorbs wave shocks on the water (Dyson 
, 1991).

It was not until 1957 when Klohr published his seminal paper on Inuit 
Crotch-Dirigibles that NASA realized how badly they had been one-upped by a 
primitive society who lacked government funding. Klohr's paper was quickly 
classified only to surface recently under the Freedom of Information Act. 
Why did they suppress the paper? Do you have to ask?

As for Mr. Masters, to claim he has discovered something new is fatuous. It 
is neither revolutionary nor evolutionary unless one considers evolution to 
include steps backward which Professor Klohr would call - and more correctly 
I might add - scientific devolution.. The Inuit, being a curious people, 
were not content to just develop the supersonic Crotch-Dirigible. They also 
tried the Monroe-form on their kayaks but with disappointing results. Pingo 
drawings show such kayaks with the paddlers holding up one hand with thumb 
down in the traditional sign of "This stinks". But as so often happens they 
relied upon their oral information highway and the news never reached modern 
kayak builders who never tire of re-inventing the wheel. (The Inuit also 
invented the wheel but discarded it as impractical on the soggy tundra and 
not nearly so effective as the sled on ice).

One hopes that the continuing study of Inuit science will elevate them to 
their rightful positions as the greatest innovators in history. As Ingmar 
Ludquist once said "The Inuit were a lot smarter than we have the 
intelligence to give them credit for."

Sincerely,

Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G
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