Why did the first people to settle in very cold climates decide to settle in such a harsh climate?
Why did the first people to settle in very cold climates decide to settle in such a harsh climate?
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My assumption: like with any territorial animal, to avoid competing with other tribes over resources. And apart from the very very cold places like Greenland, most cold places actually are abundant in food when spring comes, which would be the time tribes would venture further north in cold climates.
Yep.
And it's not like someone went from Africa to Greenland on a walkabout.
It took generations for that kind of migration, some people decided they went far enough and stopped. But at every stop, the ones who could handle colder would expand North/South where there's less competition.
They were repeatedly being selected for the people who could handle a slightly colder environment, so by the time the population reached the polar regions, all that was left was people with traits to handle the cold. Any remotely beneficial recessive gene would quickly replace dominant alleles in the population.
People think of evolution as spontaneous mutations, but really it's just the concentration of recessive genes that have been around basically forever
They were repeatedly being selected for the people who could handle a slightly colder environment, so by the time the population reached the polar regions, all that was left was people with traits to handle the cold. Any remotely beneficial recessive gene would quickly replace dominant alleles in the population.
Although I'm sure there was some genetic adaptation, I'd argue it was more technological advancement. The northernmost tribe discovers a better make of clothing, or a better housing structure and suddenly the colder winters farther north are now tolerable so people settle there. The new northern tribe refines their technology and knowledge and now that they know how to... ice fish or something they have a winter food source, and now their descendants can settle even farther north.
Although I’m sure there was some genetic adaptation
It wasn't so much spontaneous adaption...
There's more genetic diversity inside of Africa than outside of it combined.
Very very few mutations have occured outside of Africa. Blue eyes is one of the few examples, but that was a perfect storm of something just breaking (what made pigment in the eye), allowing for greater nonverbal communication (pupil dilation became more obvious), and being very very obvious no matter how much clothes you were bundled up with.
It's just Africa is so fucking diverse, that it's rare for populations to become truly isolated and for the same certain recessive genes to become the most popular variation within a fixed population. It's mostly just things like sickle cell that provides a benefit against a common cause of death even when recessive and only one copy is present. It's been a minute, but I think when one copy is the most beneficial is the fastest way to get rid of the dominant for some reason I can't recall.
So I wasn't talking about tribes mutating on the march North.
I meant the people who would expand north were more likely to have the recessive traits, mate with others, and consolidate them.
Besides, neanderthals had better tech then we did. The advantage was our faster reproduction cycle which allowed not just for greater numbers, but faster concentration of beneficial recessive traits to suit changing environments.
So like...
We have a real example that tech was second place to biology. This ain't a hypothetical. You're right tech played a part, just a smaller part.
I'm curious about the "better tech than us" claim. Can you give some more detail and context to this?