What Did Ancient Humans Do During a Heatwave?

#AncientHumans #HumanEvolution #Prehistory What did ancient humans do during a heatwave, with no air conditioning, no fridge, and the nearest water drying up? There are no diaries from the deep past, so the answers come from sweat glands, eggshells, skeletons and the people who still live in some of the hottest places on Earth. This video follows those clues, from a reed pushed into dry sand to the hard limit where even the best sweating machine stops working. This video covers: Why humans lost their fur and ended up with millions of sweat glands How fast dehydration and heatstroke set in without water or shade Why hunter-gatherers rest through the hottest hours of the day How cool rock shelters became prime real estate Sip wells: pulling water out of dry Kalahari sand with a hollow reed The 60,000-year-old engraved ostrich eggshell water bottles of Diepkloof Persistence hunting, and why some hunters chose the hottest part of the day What the Turkana Boy skeleton suggests about bodies built for heat Drying meat and sharing it fast before it spoils The Green Sahara, and the wet-bulb limit no human body can beat What's the hottest place you've ever been, and how did you get through it? Tell me in the comments, and subscribe for more stories from the human past. ____________ Sources: Jablonski, N. — The Naked Truth: Why Humans Have No Fur, Scientific American, 2010 Bramble, D. & Lieberman, D. — Endurance running and the evolution of Homo, Nature, 2004 Marlowe, F. — The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania, University of California Press, 2010 Lee, R. B. — The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society, Cambridge University Press, 1979 Texier, P.-J. et al. — A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa, PNAS, 2010 Liebenberg, L. — Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter-Gatherers, Current Anthropology, 2006 Walker, A. & Leakey, R. (eds.) — The Nariokotome Homo erectus Skeleton, Harvard University Press, 1993 deMenocal, P. et al. — Abrupt onset and termination of the African Humid Period, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2000 Sherwood, S. & Huber, M. — An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress, PNAS, 2010 Vecellio, D. et al. — Evaluating the 35°C wet-bulb temperature adaptability threshold for young, healthy subjects, Journal of Applied Physiology, 2022 Disclaimer: Made for education and entertainment. Some ideas in this video, such as how common persistence hunting was or exactly why humans lost their fur, are still debated by researchers and may change as new evidence comes in. This is not medical advice; in extreme heat, follow your local health guidance. #AncientHumans #HumanEvolution #Prehistory #HunterGatherers #StoneAge #Archaeology #HumanHistory #Heatwave