Considering the freezing temps we record annually coupled with tornadoes and other natural phenomena, how did ancient people survive the adverse weather without modern housing, clothing and heating technologies we have today. I’m taking 500+ years ago.
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Well, one, there’s a LOT of room between *ancient* people and *before modern housing* people. But both had fire.
Pre-modern civilizations built houses and had fires in them. The hearth – where the fire is held – is a very important symbol in most cultures, in part for this reason (and in part for its significance in cooking). In the West, this is usually a fireplace with a chimney, and other regions of the world have their own variants (like the Japanese [irori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irori)). Civilizations that didn’t build permanent houses, like the nomadic Sioux Indians of what is now the United States, used insulated tents with a vent ([tipis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipi), in the context of the Sioux) and built fires inside them.
Fire has been around for as long as modern humans have, and it predates the human spread beyond Africa and into colder regions, so we’ve never really lived in cold places without it. Ancient peoples built campfires and temporary shelters, but like a lot of ancient life, dying was a very real possibility – they just didn’t die enough for the civilizations to die out.
> without modern housing, clothing and heating technologies
Just because their housing, clothing and heating wasn’t modern doesn’t mean it was bad. A wood fire is dirtier than central heating, but it heats just as well. As far as clothing goes, [it’s hard to beat down or fur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_clothing) for keeping you warm. Leather’s also considered the gold standard for a lot of clothing, and we’ve been making that for millennia.
> I’m taking 500+ years ago.
People have been building very solid buildings for thousands of years. Two feet of stone or earth also insulates and protects well.
As I understand it, people trying to settle very cold areas were more likely to starve to death than to freeze to death.
For clothes, they had layers of leather and fur. Fur is good enough for animals that live in cold regions….
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>I’m taking 500+ years ago.
That’s not even very long ago, architecturally speaking. Just google something like English houses of the 1500s and you’ll quickly realize that not only do they look more or less like a modern house, but some of them *still exist and remain in use.*
In the case of my example, they were stonev and timber with plaster internal walls, much like today, just with different specific materials. They had fireplaces for heat, and sometimes vents in walls and floors to circulate that heat and reduce the need for fires in every room. Hot air and cold air will naturally move on their own as they displace one another, even without modern fans. Larger, wealthier houses certainly had several fireplaces anyway.
Different methods for different regions with different resources.
Some of the indigenous peoples of the tornado and cold prone parts of the North American prairies built underground homes roofed over at the surface and entered by a long ladder from above, with nothing to easily blow away when the winds came. Fires were often made with dried animal dung or compacted dried sod bricks (packed dead grass and roots with the soil shaken off).
In Siberia and Northern China where there were more trees to burn, or coal available, mass heat stoves were used, a couple tons of surface mortared and sealed brick or stone with many open air channels between the stones inside to circulate the hot air and save it up into the stone itself so a small firebox/cooking burner at the bottom could be kept going constantly on scraps all winter. The single large bed in the house was on top of the widest warmest part and everyone in the house piled in at night together for the heat. This cost as little wood or coal as possible while extracting the maximum heat from the smoke before it left the building. There are some very efficient modern designs in use.
When it comes to personal weather armour, fur, wool and layering both work quite well. Wool can get wet and still retain its insulating qualities but it gets really heavy. A waxed or fat rubbed piece of leather works to repel rain or soggy snow as a coat and boots.
A sheepskin coat oiled on the inner skin side to weather proof it with wool worn facing your body is amazingly warm.
Sheep are everywhere for a reason, you can eat them, milk them and make excellent survival clothing with their wool. All around best survival farm animal to have on hand.
people wore thick clothing with wool, leather or fur and they also made fires to stop them from get hypothermia
What do you mean DID?
Plenty of people still do. Here’s a YouTube channel of a family living in Siberia. They don’t use that much modern technology.
https://youtube.com/@KiunB
Op, the people you’re talking about had better quality housing, clothing and food than modern people…
Every place has adapted their infrastructure to its climate..
It’s not like there’s just a standard way of building a house and it would be more or less the same all around the world..
Also.. smaller houses for survival which can easily be warmed by a fire. So it would be plenty warm and toasty inside even during winter..
A relative has a small wooden hut in the mountains one room basically, one layer of 10cm wood between you and outside… It gets hot as hell in there even during degrees well below zero..
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