I’m talking survivor-caveman conditions here. Seems we’ve spread pretty much everywhere on the planet, and long before we had any kind of modern technology too. Just how far into cold places could we get without fire or clothes though? It’s about -20C where I am right now, and I see deer just casually strolling across the yards nightly. Without my clothes and heated shelter, I wouldn’t last a day… whereas many other animals are suited to surviving freezing temperatures naked.
Other animals make use of natural shleters or even make their own, cultivate or store food, use tools (in a limited way), migrate, and even alter the landscape. AFAIK none of them burn things to create extra heat or wear any kind of clothing to keep warm like we do.
So if we kept everything else we do but those two traits, what areas or latitudes would we be resticted to - at least in the sense of setting up permanent “breeding populations”.
Mmmmm, yeah I guess such circumstances would have affected our migratory routes back when we were spreading. How about today now that we are everywhere though? If the combustion and clothing were cut off, where would we start disappearing from? I think we could survive well in tropical or subtropical regions. But probably a lot of the Northern US and Canada (except for some coastal areas) would be too cold for us… year-round that is. The southern hemisphere seems in general warm enough for us… how far into Europe and Asia could we survive?
My guess is, we’d be confined to areas where the night temperature never got below maybe 15-18 degrees C. Day temperature could be in the thirties, as long as we had lots or water to replenish our sweat.
Hardly. 15 degrees is a mildly uncomfortable temperature to be naked in, but it’s not even close to being dangerous. If we huddle together for warmth, I’m sure we could handle the occasional stint below 0 C, as long as it didn’t happen every night.
We’d still have insulated buildings & electricity (or does that count as fire?) so it shouldn’t be too difficult to maintain most of our current ranges. Feral children can adapt to running around in winter, at not too northern latitudes. I imagine once we toughened up, we could function pretty well for periods outside in winter.
Heh… if we were huddling together for warmth naked, I imagine that’d be conducive to activities that might generate a bit more heat… (and more huddlers, hehe)
Indeed, which brings us to another way for a species to survive harsh conditions: It doesn’t matter how many people die during the winter, as long as they’re fewer than the number of people born the next summer :).