What made early humans migrate to extremely cold places such as Russia to Alaska?
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In addition to resource competition, population packing in other regions, and the fact that it was a very slow process rather than a “hey let’s go all the way to Siberia from Africa” kind of deal, tundra and boreal forest environments can be really attractive habitats for hunter-gatherers. There were massive, easy-to-follow herds of Caribou that provided meat and hides, mammoths and other extinct large land mammals, and abundant fish and aquatic mammals to exploit along the coasts or on the ice. Dealing with the cold is a problem, but with fire, skin clothing, seasonal nomadism, and some simple structures it’s not really as tough of a habitat as you might think. Some archaeologists actually believe that dense tropical rainforests may have been much more challenging places to live and may have taken longer for humans to colonize than the high latitudes.
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