Planet Earth has climatic cycles that, due to a combination of factors, cause average temperatures to vary over hundreds of thousands of years. One of the climatic phases that arouses us the most curiosity is the so-called Ice Age. The last glacial stage ended around 10,000 BC, after which the Holocene began, the interglacial period in which we currently live. But a time will come again when cold is the dominant feature of the environment on our planet. What will we do then?
It is impossible to be right and even difficult to imagine what human life will be like (if it is still here) when the next glaciation makes an appearance. Looking hundreds of millennia into the future leads us to inevitably speak in a fictitious tone, as can be seen in many apocalyptic films. But, to overcome 100,000 years of cold, we can look at the key elements that allowed Homo sapiens to successfully emerge from the last ice age.
Adapt or die
110,000 years ago, the last cold era we have experienced began. The Würm Glaciation , popularly known as the Ice Age, lasted until 10,000 BC and its glacial maximum, the coldest point on the planet, occurred between 25,000 and 19,000 years ago. By then, Neanderthals were extinct and Europe was populated only by Sapiens .
According to some paleoanthropologists, the last Neanderthals were able to spend the end of their days in the Gibraltar area 25,000 years ago. Perhaps they were able to get there by fleeing the cold . The reasons that led Neanderthals to extinction are matters of scientific debate, but one of the elements that favored Homo sapiens was a superior ability to adapt to low temperatures . While Neanderthals became isolated, Sapiens, despite high mortality, slowly increased their population. What did we do better than the Neanderthals to remain the human species on earth after the Ice Age?
Survival Kit: Coats, Tech, Maps, Social Media, and Art
There were important differences between Neanderthals and Sapiens in the tools, the use of skins, food, knowledge of the environment and social relationships.
Sapiens developed better technology for hunting and fishing : wood, stone, bone and animal horns were used as material to create harpoons, hooks, spears, propellers and traps to seize prey such as horses, goats, deer, reindeer, rhinos and woolly mammoths. These animals were a basic source of fur, fat, and meat. In the same way, 22,000 years ago we began to make bone or ivory needles , to make clothing with the skins , as well as cabins , in the tipi style of the North American Indians, either inside caves, sheltered by a rocky wall or outside. outdoors, depending on the season of the year.
Meat was an essential food as a complement to vegetables, fish, shellfish and eggs. The study of the teeth and the tartar accumulated in them has revealed interesting information: fifty percent of the diet at that time was covered by vegetables. But many times the cold made it difficult to get plants and hunting was not always successful, so they did not hesitate to resort to cannibalism .
Organization and knowledge of the environment is key to surviving in extreme conditions. In Navarra, the Abauntz cave houses a stone with an engraved map from 13,700 years ago informing about paths, rivers and hunting places.
As in the Coronavirus pandemic for which we were isolated for a long time, art saved many of us and, in extreme situations, it will once again be a fundamental element. We have preserved cave paintings from the Ice Age, such as the Chauvet horses or the Altamira bison. Beyond magical-religious rituals, some researchers attribute social characteristics to these paintings. If so, they too had their social network wall (literally) . Sculptures such as the venus, or a flute made of bone that appeared in Germany, invite us to think that art, music and stories could bring together and socially unite the humans of that time.
The cold made Homo sapiens develop their knowledge, skills, technology and social relationships. A magnificent preamble to the greatest revolution in human history: when the Ice Age ended, agriculture arrived. Developing the same elements will be key for our species when the next ice age arrives, or we will be the extinct group that sought refuge in the south.
References:
Díez Martín, F. 2009. Brief history of Homo sapiens . Nowtilus.
Monclova, A. 2020. Neanderthal Extinction and Modern Humans. will have lunch
