What Did Ancient Humans Do When It Rained All Week?

What Did Ancient Humans Do When It Rained All Week? What did ancient humans do when it rained all week? We follow early humans and Neanderthals through a long stretch of bad weather: smoky caves, the oldest known beds, the oldest string, and the one thing in camp that could not be allowed to go out. 📝 ABOUT THIS VIDEO: Seven days of rain, a rock overhang, and a group of early humans with nowhere to go. Today's naive question: what did ancient humans do when it rained all week? Four things under that overhang: a roof, a string, a bed, and an ember. Along the way: a smoke model of a cave in France, a cord stuck to a Neanderthal stone tool, grass beds laid on ash, a sleep study without electric light, cedar-bark rain capes of the Pacific Northwest, and a Makah village preserved under clay. How did cavemen stay dry? Did prehistoric people sleep through bad weather? Could Neanderthals make fire? Answers come from published research in archaeology and human evolution, rated as measured, debated or just a guess. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Smoke in Lazaret Cave — "The influence of smoke density on hearth location and activity areas at Lower Paleolithic Lazaret Cave, France" (2022, Scientific Reports) — Kedar, Kedar and Barkai. ▸ Oldest cord — "Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications" (2020, Scientific Reports) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61... — Hardy and colleagues: a three-ply cord from Abri du Maras, 41,000 to 52,000 years old. ▸ Who made the cord — "The Oldest String Ever Found May Have Been Made By Neanderthals" (2020, NPR) — John Shea on the open attribution. ▸ Border Cave beds — "Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa" (2020, Science) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc7239 — Wadley and colleagues: grass bedding on ash; why ash was used is their interpretation. ▸ Sibudu beds — "Middle Stone Age bedding construction and settlement patterns at Sibudu, South Africa" (2011, Science) — bedding about 77,000 years old. ▸ Sleep without electricity — "Natural sleep and its seasonal variations in three pre-industrial societies" (2015, Current Biology) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.09... — Yetish, Siegel and colleagues: about 6.4 hours a night. ▸ Hoh Rain Forest — National Park Service, Olympic National Park visitor page. ▸ Northwest Coast life — Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Northwest Coast Indian" — rain capes, winter villages, stored salmon. ▸ Ozette — History of the Ozette Archaeological Project (Northwest Anthropology) and Washington State University — excavated 1970 to 1981 by the Makah Tribe and WSU. ▸ Keeping fire alight — The Andaman Islanders (1922, Cambridge University Press) — A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. ▸ Fire and climate — "On the role of fire in Neandertal adaptations in Western Europe: evidence from Pech de l'Azé IV and Roc de Marsal, France" (2011, PaleoAnthropology) https://doi.org/10.4207/PA.2011.ART54 — Sandgathe and colleagues; the lightning idea is a hypothesis. ▸ Fire making doubted — "Were Western European Neandertals able to make fire?" (2018, Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology) https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-017-00... — Dibble and colleagues. Dibble's quote: "On Hearths Ancient and Modern" (2010, The Pennsylvania Gazette). ▸ Pyrite wear — "Neandertal fire-making technology inferred from microwear analysis" (2018, Scientific Reports) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28... — Sorensen, Claud and Soressi. ▸ Barnham — "Earliest evidence of making fire" (2025, Nature) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09... — Davis, Ashton and colleagues: about 400,000 years old. ▸ Fire and blood pressure — "Hearth and campfire influences on arterial blood pressure: defraying the costs of the social brain through fireside relaxation" (2014, Evolutionary Psychology) — Christopher Lynn; preliminary. ———————————————————— PEOPLE & PLACES IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Makah Tribe, Neah Bay, Washington — home of the Makah Cultural and Research Center. ▸ Lazaret, Abri du Maras, Pech de l'Azé IV, Roc de Marsal, France — Paleolithic shelters. ▸ Border Cave and Sibudu, South Africa — sites of the oldest known bedding. ▸ Barnham, Suffolk, England — the oldest known evidence of fire making. ▸ Hadza, San and Tsimane — modern communities in the sleep study. ———————————————————— 🎬 This channel is made by just me, from reading the sources and writing the script to editing the video. I use AI to help, but most of the work is mine. ———————————————————— #prehistory #evolution #archaeology #neanderthals #earlyhumans