George B. Dyson's article in the April 2000 edition of Scientific American, "The Aleutian Kayak", illustrates that the Aleut hunters of the past, were ahead of their time with their technologically superior version of the modern kayak, the baidarka. Dyson reports that the innovative design of the baidarka greatly propitiated this hunter-gatherer society who relied on sea mammals who lived in the treacherous waters of the area. Dyson explained that this design of the baidarka increased its speed and reduced the amount of energy that the kayakers' needed to expend during their hunts. Unfortunately, few baidarkas and the knowledge of how to reconstruct new ones remain for modern person to study and fully understand the brilliance of these incredible people.
             The Aleuts lived in a marginal area of the Earth that had scarce supplies of vegetation for the islanders to gather due to the unstable environment. Hunting sea mammals (collecting food) in the violent waters around their homes was used as subsistence technology. The baidarka's design was ideally suited for the rough water and long distances traveled by the Aleuts during their hunts. The baidarka was made of driftwood, lashed with baleen fiber and covered with translucent sea-mammal skin that made the structure elastic-like. This structural elasticity would have allowed stresses applied to it by the constant pounding of the sea, to be distributed equally throughout the craft, by means of keeping the craft intact considering the lightweight materials the baidarka's were made from.
             According to William S. Laughlin, the physical demands of hunting at sea led the Aleuts "to shuffle a whole lot faster through the evolutionary deck." This means that the Aleuts adaptation to their environment was a necessity. Natural selection results in more favorable genes to become more frequent in a population over time. Maybe t
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