What Did Ancient Humans Do When the Rain Never Stopped?

What did ancient humans do when it rained all week? They smelled it coming and got under cover, carried fire in little boxes, built roofs of branches and raincoats of grass and gut, and waited it out together, making and mending. We follow one wet week, day by day. Your nose can smell the coming rain at a few parts per trillion. A drought in 1989 exposed 23,000-year-old huts with grass beds on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Ötzi the Iceman carried fire in a birch-bark box and wore a raincoat made of grass, and Arctic hunters sewed waterproof jackets from seal gut. And the twist: your wrinkly bath fingers are made by your nervous system, and scientists still argue over whether they evolved for grip in the rain. Chapters 0:00 Seven days of rain, no roof 0:38 Day 1: The smell of rain 1:59 Day 2: A roof of branches 3:15 Day 3: Keeping the fire alive 4:41 Days 4 and 5: Raincoats of grass and gut 6:01 Day 6: Why your fingers wrinkle 7:29 Day 7: Case closed Sources Bear, I. J. & Thomas, R. G. (1964). Nature of argillaceous odour. Nature, 201, 993–995. Joung, Y. S. & Buie, C. R. (2015). Aerosol generation by raindrop impact on soil. Nature Communications, 6, 6083. Becher, P. G. et al. (2020). Developmentally regulated volatiles geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol attract a soil arthropod to Streptomyces bacteria promoting spore dispersal. Nature Microbiology, 5, 821–829. Nadel, D. et al. (2004). Stone Age hut in Israel yields world's oldest evidence of bedding. PNAS, 101(17), 6821–6826. Nadel, D. & Werker, E. (1999). The oldest ever brush hut plant remains from Ohalo II, Jordan Valley, Israel (19,000 BP). Antiquity, 73, 755–764. Théry-Parisot, I. (2002). Fuel management (bone and wood) during the Lower Aurignacian in the Pataud rock shelter. Journal of Archaeological Science, 29, 1415–1421. Acs, P. et al. (2005). Remains of grasses found with the Neolithic Iceman "Ötzi". Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 14, 198–206. South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. Ötzi's equipment. Lewis, T. & Pickering, G. W. (1935). Circulatory changes in the fingers in some diseases of the nervous system. Clinical Science, 2, 149–175. Changizi, M. et al. (2011). Are wet-induced wrinkled fingers primate rain treads? Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 77, 286–290. Kareklas, K., Nettle, D. & Smulders, T. V. (2013). Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects. Biology Letters, 9, 20120999. Haseleu, J. et al. (2014). Water-induced finger wrinkles do not affect touch acuity or dexterity in handling wet objects. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e84949. Narration is AI-generated (ElevenLabs). Illustrations are AI-generated from our own prompts. #AncientHumans #Prehistory #HumanHistory