More often than not, it is stupid mistakes, not Mother Nature that causes people to die from exposure. She is not cruel; we are often simply neophytes when it comes to existing in her realm. We should recognize and respect the irony of Mother Nature’s law—she provides the supplies to build a shelter, but she holds the awesome power to bring it down.
What it really takes to live comfortably in any weather and terrain is a lot of study into what has worked before, what can be learned from modern research and technology, combined with basic “abo” logic. Stir that information up in your brain and you will be better prepared to live with the elements than any generation since humans first left their caves.
Ice Age Adaptability
Before the advent of man-made fibers, people pretty much had to rely on their imagination and what was available to them to keep warm. In fact, it was not unusual for a chilly Neanderthal to settle down for the night under the stars in a pile of dry leaves. This crude method of insulation did not last long, however, before man decided to turn over a new leaf.
If you say “Neanderthal” to friends and ask for their first association, you’ll probably get “cave-man.” While most excavated Neanderthal remains do come from caves, that’s because open-air sites would be eroded much more quickly. Neanderthals must have constructed some type of shelter against the cold climate in which they lived, but those shelters must have been crude. All that remain are post-holes and a few piles of stones.
But we know that the Ice Age hunter became pretty good at adapting to his weather-driven life because he survived three 100,000 year periods of freezing and warming. Life was obviously hard and most people died young. It is estimated at least half the Neanderthal population perished in childhood, and less than 5% lived past the age of 40, partly due to exposure.
Cave-dwelling Paleolithic people were often desperately hungry. Because of the blizzards outside their caves, they were forced to hunt within them. And there, by a stroke of luck they found just what they needed—a big hibernating beast whose meat and fat were delicious and whose pelt made the best kind of cold-weather garment. This animal, now extinct, was the cave bear, which weighed over 1,000 pounds at maturity. Cave bears were so prolific in the Austrian Alps that the bones of 50,000 of them were found in a single cave.
So animal pelts and fur replaced leaves and became all the rage in insulated apparel. Entire families were outfitted in this newest line of outerwear. And, although this was somewhat more sophisticated than foliage insulation, the cold still got under their skins.
Around 75,000 B.C. when the fourth glacial advances refrigerated Europe, man stayed in the north and developed new skills simply through the effort to keep warm.
The human economy of the Old Stone Age was based entirely on hunting, which not only gave man his food but provided raw materials, such as hide, sinew and bone. During the winter, large-scale mammoth hunts were organized in what is now Russia and other parts of the north. After the mammoths were eaten, their bones were used to make tools and weapons and their tusks were used to anchor the skin coverings of dwellings dug out of the frozen ground. Undoubtedly, one wooly mammoth, the largest land-dwelling animal that man has ever encountered, would have provided warm protection against the cold for a number of people.
By 35,000-28,000 B.C. descendants of Neanderthals had special tools for dressing animal skins and had figured out how to increase the effectiveness of skin-and-fur insulation by lacing their clothes together with thongs. (It took another 14,000 years to develop the first bone needles with eyes which equipped women to stitch leather clothing.)
The Big Melt-down
Then, about 20,000 years ago, Europe became gradually warmer and man emerged from the protection of his caves and began a life in the open. Late Cro-Magnon clans built dwellings from wood, stone, bone or skins or lived in natural rock shelters and spent much of the year in cozy base camps, complete with hearths and cobblestone floors which provided insulation in the winter. And, in an ingenious piece of interior design, they heated the cobblestones before placing them on the frozen mud. The stones melted the hard ground, settled in snugly and made sturdy, dry floors.
They also established seasonal camps-the Paleolithic equivalent of summer condos. Built on rises, these shelters provided a good view of migrating herds. Seventy-five percent of the sites were found to face south, indicating that the builders took advantage of solar heat. Nothing has really changed, has it? Even in our own time, southern exposure adds value to a home.
This less sedentary lifestyle required temporary shelter that could be moved or abandoned and rebuilt as the people followed the herds.
Prehistoric sheep with dark hairy coats that caught on branches or simply fell off their bodies in heavy clumps every spring also roamed Europe. It is likely that early people took advantage of the matted wool for warmth, but this is only speculation since wool, like other natural fibers, is biodegradable and rarely part of archaeological finds.
Man almost certainly discovered the food value of sheep first, but when he began to fashion garments to protect his body from hot or freezing temperatures, he learned that sheep could be worth more alive than dead.
About 12,000 years ago, when man realized that with sheep he could roam and prosper on the windswept mountains and plains, a cooperative relationship developed-man protected the sheep from predators, sheep provided man with food and clothing. Wool clothing also allowed nomadic tribes to expand into extremes of terrain and climate. The Bedouin still use wool for their tents and wear wool clothing as insulation in the desert.
“Felting” compacts wool, making it less permeable, warmer, studier, and more water resistant. Magdalenian shepherds probably stumbled onto felt when they put loose wool in their sandals for comfort on a long journey and the moisture, movement, and warmth transformed the wool into felt. In fact, wool was so popular in the lives of Asian nomads that in the fourth century B.C. the Chinese called their territory “the land of felt.” Man, whose body is least suited of all the animals to live in inhospitable climates, has made use of the natural material ever since.
Modern-day Insulation
But modern man is probably less well adapted for living in extremes than his ancient ancestors who were toughened and acclimated to a degree of heat and cold exposure which modern man has been clever enough to avoid. In today’s jet age we can travel to extreme variations of climate in mere hours.
It takes an average person who works in a controlled atmosphere approximately two weeks to become acclimated to an new environment. My own experience has shown this to be true. When leading a trip, I find it is easier to sleep on the fifth and sixth day than the first four days because I have come from a controlled environment. I generally try to acclimate myself prior to a trip by opening the windows and sleeping without blankets.
Yet people who work in the outdoors and are continually subjected to the cold or heat can still maintain dexterity under these conditions. For instance, fishermen, loggers, and construction workers suffer few effects from being exposure to the weather to which they are accustomed; but they also dress suitably for their exposure.
I experienced this acclimation in the Bitterroot valley of Montana during one particularly cold winter. From late winter to spring temperatures were well below zero. At first I bundled up when I went to the wood pile. With each successive week the extremes seemed more bearable, until after a month of this activity I found myself checking the thermometer because it felt warmer than it actually was. By April, when it warmed up to 10° F. I was in my shirt sleeves.
Lacking the time to acclimate, the answer is insulation. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, to insulate is: 1) to cover or protect with a substance or device that prevents the . . . loss of heat; 2) to isolate from influences that might affect it. The key word being “affect.”