[Spike Knotts]

"“The Sámi are believed to be the first known culture to have herded animals,” writes one scholar."

"Meanwhile, a smaller minority of Mountain Sámi continued to hunt reindeer, and around the 1500s began taming the overhunted animals into herds, becoming the famed reindeer nomads"

Uh...something doesn't compute. Is it the author's contention that no one else on Earth "herded animals" until the 16th century? Ok...no wonder the "scholar" chose to remain nameless.

The pictures seem contrived and poised to me. Natives ginning it up for a naive, or not so naive photographer out looking for his romantic preconceptions of a stone age existence...much like the highly stylized and arranged 19th century American Indian pictures that the media used to introduce the idea of the noble savage. To believe that most of these pictures are genuine seems similar to believing that if a photographer decided to come by my house to document a rapidly vanishing breed, the Southernus Redneckus, he'd just happen to find me in the front yard wearing a Budweiser cap, wife beater and cut offs...and I conveniently have my dogs, Camaro, truck, guns, tools, and family arranged around me. Ready for the glamor shot.

[muawiyah]

Some of the photos date from the late 1800s where it was still very common to have folks stand in poses for minutes at a time ~ that was a function of the technology available in those days.

Regarding wearing their Sunday best, used to be everybody dressed up for a photo ~ women in their skirts, broad sleeved blouses, pointed hats/bonnets and the men in their best leather brogalis.

We have a number of family pictures where the photographer set up quite a long way from his subjects because you had many adults only 4' tall mixed in with others that were well over 7' tall. Fortunately they stood very still so we can do blow-ups of individuals that are very good likenesses.

You'll notice the photographers in FennoScandinavia had similar problems due to the height differentials.