Why are Inuit in the North Pole?
Inuit people mainly live in Siberia, Greenland and Alaska in the Arctic, so many people mistakenly think that they are indigenous whites. But most of them are yellow people like us.
About 14000 years ago, due to the deterioration of living environment, Inuit people were forced to move northward. They don't know it's still ice and snow in the north. After continuous exploration, some people came to Alaska and Greenland, while others stayed in the wilderness of Siberia.
In Alaska, they met Native American Indians and clashed with them, causing countless casualties. Indians named Inuit "Eskimos", which means people who eat raw meat. They think that these people are still living in the era of eating raw meat and drinking blood, extremely backward, and do not belong to human beings, expressing contempt. But this name has not been recognized by Inuit people, who believe in animism and nature. In their own culture, "Inuit" means real human beings, and perhaps in their eyes, their own way of life is the instinct that human beings should have the most.
Under the persecution of Indians, some Inuit people can only continue to go north and reach the North Pole. Indians can't adapt to the cold climate there, so Inuit can avoid the disaster of genocide.
Inuit people lived quietly in the Arctic for nearly ten thousand years, until the Travel Notes of Marco Polo came out, and westerners crossed the ocean in order to come to China for gold. Some lost people came to the North Pole, and the Inuit were rediscovered by the world.
Why are the Inuit not afraid of the cold?
In order to resist the cold, not waste any body fat and reduce their energy consumption, Inuit people evolved their bodies into short and thin shapes under natural selection, which looked like the height of junior high school students. And they can survive in such cold conditions and are not afraid of the cold, which is related to the igloo. The igloo is an Inuit house. Seen from the outside, this is a small house made of snow.
However, the snow used to make igloos is not ordinary scattered snow, but is made of high-density bricks, which looks like large compressed biscuits. These snow bricks are pressed tightly, but even if they are pressed tightly, there are gaps to store air. Air has weak thermal conductivity and can "lock" heat in the igloo.
Therefore, even if the snow is cold and the outside of the igloo is cold, the heat generated inside the igloo will not easily run out, and it has good thermal insulation performance. In order to reduce the heat jumping out, igloos usually only open a very low door or passage. Children need to bend over to enter, while adults may really need to climb into the house on their stomach.
Warm air generally rises and cold air sinks. Setting the channel below can also reduce the heat outflow and achieve the purpose of heat preservation. Under multiple heat preservation, even if the outside temperature is close to MINUS 50℃, the temperature inside the igloo is basically 0℃, which is still suitable for survival.
Not only that, they will hug each other or make a fire to keep warm. The material used in the fire is seal fat or salmon oil, which can not only play the role of lighting, but also raise the temperature of the igloo, and sometimes they can undress and sleep shirtless in the igloo.
Of course, igloos are made of snow after all, and it is inevitable that they will melt when they encounter open flames and high temperatures. Therefore, Inuit people need to rebuild igloos every once in a while. When the insulation function of the igloo became worse, they had to abandon the old one and build a new one.
50 degrees below zero! How do Inuit live?
Due to the single and harsh living environment, the Inuit people's life is also very simple, and there are not many requirements in other aspects except the igloo where they live. Food: In the snow-covered environment, there are almost no plants to grow here, so Inuit people have almost no chance to eat fruits and vegetables.
They mainly hunt reindeer, polar bears, seals, whales and other marine life. These foods contain a lot of fat and protein, which can increase their heat to resist the cold.
Unlike us, Inuit eat raw meat and are not afraid of parasites or bacteria. However, it is puzzling that the Inuit people in Indonesia rarely suffer from chronic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes under this unbalanced nutrition. However, their average life expectancy is relatively short, only about 68 years old. I wonder if it has something to do with this unhealthy diet.
Clothing: In order to resist the cold, Inuit people must be "fully armed" and wear as many clothes as possible, and the clothes are stacked thickly. And most of their clothes come from the fur of seals and reindeer they hunt, which is really fur. However, in that environment, their hunting behavior is understandable in order to survive.
Good: Inuit people don't have systematic navigation like us. Most of them rely on the migration of fish and birds to identify the direction, and rely on the behavior of reindeer to analyze whether the road ahead is dangerous or there are beasts; They will use sand, sticks and pebbles to make a "map" that only their own people can understand, and they can travel by sleigh.
So huskies or reindeer are very important "means of transportation" for Inuit people. Perhaps because of long-term isolation, Inuit people did not form a rigid ethical social consciousness. Most of them are polygamous, and marriage is a necessity for them to continue their race.
Inuit people maintain the most primitive way of life, but in the face of outsiders, they still exude natural goodwill and express their welcome in their own way. Maybe someone will ask: Why don't they live in a warm place? Perhaps it is the sense of stability brought by the North Pole, or it may be that they are not willing to leave their homeland after they are familiar with such living conditions! What do you think of this?