How Did Ancient Humans Survive -40° Nights With No Heat?

The power just went out. It is February, 2 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and by midnight you can see your breath in the living room. In 2021, millions of Texans lived through exactly that. So how did your ancestors survive winters far worse, for 50,000 years, with no furnace and no house unless they built it themselves? In this video you will peel back the layers that kept early humans alive in the cold, from the inside out. You will find the hidden heater still tucked around your neck right now, see how lice DNA reveals when we first wore clothes, step inside a giant ring built from the bones of more than 60 mammoths, and learn why a snow house can stay warm at 40 below. And you will discover the most powerful layer of all, the one almost nobody expects. If you enjoyed this trip back in time, hit like, tell us in the comments about the coldest night you ever lived through, and subscribe to keep exploring prehistory with Henry the Caveman. Sources: - Texas Department of State Health Services (2022). February 2021 Winter Storm-Related Deaths, final count of 246. - van Marken Lichtenbelt, W. D. et al. (2009). Cold-activated brown adipose tissue in healthy men. New England Journal of Medicine. - van der Lans, A. A. J. J. et al. (2013). Cold acclimation recruits human brown fat and increases nonshivering thermogenesis. Journal of Clinical Investigation. - Racimo, F. et al. (2017). Archaic adaptive introgression in TBX15/WARS2. Molecular Biology and Evolution. - Bartsiokas, A. & Arsuaga, J. L. (2020). Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago. L'Anthropologie. - Goren-Inbar, N. et al. (2004). Evidence of hominin control of fire at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel. Science. - Toups, M. A., Kitchen, A., Light, J. E. & Reed, D. L. (2011). Origin of clothing lice indicates early clothing use by anatomically modern humans in Africa. Molecular Biology and Evolution. - Gilligan, I. (2019). Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory. Cambridge Uni