Why did humans decide to settle down in very harsh environments like Siberia or the Saharan Desert, why not live in places more moderate and more accepting to life and civilization?
In: 2272
In any environment, the best suited take the best spots. the less well suited (or in human cases, the less well-connected or powerful) get pushed further and further from the ideal areas. Since it’s the only alternative to just dying, they adapt new habits that allow them to live well in “fringe” territories, and to exploit resources that wouldnt be available in the prime properties they were pushed out of. As the new adaptations make the formerly marginal areas dersireable, the same things happen, and a new group gets pushed out.
It’s also not uncommon for a “good area” to become over exploited and ruined, and for the inhabitants to range out looking for better areas to graze, fish, farm, etc. In Russia this was done deliberately in the nineteenth century, when the Czars would send the inhabitants of a village out to build new farms and villages in unexploited “wild” territory.
Latest Answers