Ancient Humans vs. The Ice Age: How They Really Survived

No heating. No stores. No trees for firewood. Just months of frozen darkness on an endless icy plain. So how did ancient humans survive the Ice Age winter? Forget the old image of people shivering in caves. On the frozen plains of Europe and Asia, there were almost no caves at all. Instead, people built round houses out of mammoth bones, burned bone and fat when there was no wood, and turned the frozen ground into a natural freezer. In this video we find out how tiny lice revealed when humans started wearing clothes, why the bone needle may be one of the most important inventions in history, and why two children in Ice Age Russia were buried with more than ten thousand hand-carved beads. And maybe, why winter taught the human mind to think ahead. 🔥 Pull up a seat by the fire. New story every week. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Winter today vs 20,000 years ago 0:54 The myth of the Ice Age cave 1:11 Houses made of mammoth bones 1:45 A circle of 60 mammoths 2:27 Burning bone instead of wood 2:52 One Ice Age winter day 3:36 What lice reveal about clothes 4:19 The bone needle 4:51 Ten thousand beads 5:25 How winter trained our brains 6:06 Long winter nights 6:28 Winter today 7:03 The whole picture 📚 Sources & further reading Mezhyrich mammoth bone dwellings, Ukraine Pryor et al. (2020), Antiquity — the mammoth bone circle at Kostenki 11 Upper Paleolithic fat-burning stone lamps Toups et al. (2011), Molecular Biology and Evolution — lice and the origin of clothing Upper Paleolithic eyed bone needles Sungir burials, Russia — mammoth ivory beads (Trinkaus, Buzhilova and colleagues) #AncientHumans #IceAge #HumanHistory ---