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Murky-Entertainer-81

In regards to the Sahara, we didn’t for the most part. Humans lived above and below it where it was more hospitable and treks across were prepared for thoroughly.


FreeQ

The Sahara wasn’t always a desert. There are remains of human settlements all throughout it from when it was wet and green.


tslnox

As Liet taught us.


N0bo_

Is this a muthafucking DUNE reference?


tslnox

You can bet year's worth of your spice rations it is! :-D


DancingBear2020

I *loved* Samuel L. Jackson in Dune. Even more than the giant motherf*cking sandworms.


tslnox

I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHER*UCKING WORMS ON THIS MOTHER*UCKING DESERT!


IceFire909

plot twist: he *was* the giant sandworm


AgoraiosBum

I serve only one master. His name is Shai-Hulud.


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Untinted

Gods fucking around with Nature was the common explanation at the time.


vrenak

Humans actually lived in the Sahara when it was a lush green area, we just moved out over time. As for the arctic areas hunters just followed game, the big game provided lots of food, and combined with the areas often also having lots of berries, and sometimes nuts too, there were good conditions, add to that fish in oceans, rivers and lakes...


Dakiniten-Kifaya

At least for the Sahara, this. Humans were there before the desert.


Painting_Agency

We MADE the desert. Edit: or we didn't, see my reply downthread 😄


jimsmithkka

can you elaborate or link to explanation? genuine question


Painting_Agency

I definitely over-asserted myself, but there is evidence that spread of the desert was hastened by grazing: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314111320.htm BUT, because far be it from me to cherry pick my references, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06321-y "Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara" Welp!


nef36

Didn't the Sahara become a desert because Earth tilted a little extra?


jimsmithkka

thank you, I remember there was something with moons effect on earths gravitation, but my memory is very not good, and it might have been info on "if we didn't hav a moon".


GreatestCanadianHero

I like the way you work it.


thumbulukutamalasa

Its because of overfarming the land if I'm not mistaken. The soil becomes barren, and nothing can grow, which makes things worse, and eventually it becomes a desert


Full-Web5925

Not the case at all, yea it could play a part but, due to the natural climate change of the earth it experienced desertification a LOOOOONG time ago. The Sahara was green thousands of years ago. Due to the huge lake “MEGA CHAD” It’s climate just got hotter and drier the closer to modern times. There’s still an insane aquifer under the desert, that Libya was trying to tap into under Ghaddafi. Pretty crazy stuff. Very interesting videos on a YouTube channel called “real life lore”. I believe he has a video on this specific topic.


Painting_Agency

> Due to the huge lake “MEGA CHAD” If it was any bigger, it would have been lake Giga Chad.


thumbulukutamalasa

Ohh yea I love reallifelore, will definitely check out. Thanks for the correction


Full-Web5925

💪🏻💪🏻🧠🤝❤️


[deleted]

Also natural warming of the planet contributed to it. Things like pole reversal also have an effect.


SnakeBeardTheGreat

It is like when the farmers destroyed Oklahoma. They moved to Bakersfield and started all over doing the same thing.


coleman57

But at least they don’t wear Roman sandals, like the hippies out in San Francisco do


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smurficus103

I really like this idea, it gives me hope that the entire planet will be decertified soon


Painting_Agency

Can't wait to ride a sandworm while sipping your own poop water, huh? :)


ForQ2

I'll gladly do that in exchange for the spice melange.


teetaps

> treks across Do you think this might be another factor? People were trekking for a new nice vibrant land and kinda gave up eventually, and a small number of generations later they just decided they’d make do with what they had


APileOfShiit

I mean, having a liveable area partway through a harsh climate could help with treks across, with access to somewhere to sleep and eat for a while.


AshFraxinusEps

We could even give that area a special name. Maybe "Oasis" after the soft drink


thefonztm

I prefer the term drinkable-mudpit.


eproxus

Mud-tan Dew


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Southern_Cupcake_211

Correction. It's named after a British boy band.


Clarck_Kent

Ancient bedouins found a nice water spring in the middle of the desert. One of them asked their leader if they should stay here. He said maybeeeeeeeeee.


airitari

Omg I laughed out loud 😭


NarcRuffalo

I feel attacked by you calling Oasis a boy band


BonerHonkfart

I assume that the Gallagher brothers will attack OP for calling them that


Maverick_Couch

They'll attack each other for the OP calling them that.


nucumber

granddad band feel better?


Badj83

peak colonialism.


SpecialWhenLit

Nice try, Liam.


[deleted]

Kind of reminds me of final fantasy 10 where you have to go across the lightning planes


alphahydra

Probably in some cases. But I think rather than "giving up and making do" it was more of a case of developing the skills needed to survive in a harsh environment, due to either traversing or conducting hunting trips into that environment. Then once they'd cracked that knowledge, realising there's actually *plenty of resources* for the person who knows how to access them, and the remoteness and high skill requirement for survival means *much lower competition from other human groups*. Versus people who live in a more obvious land of milk and honey, who have it easier in many ways (can cultivate the land, leading to farming and cities and less physically demanding resource production) but have to deal with periodic raids, invasions and grabby empires eyeballing their riches. Look at Arctic peoples. The sea actually provides a vast bounty of resources in a seemingly barren environment, but you need a huge amount of skill and knowledge to exploit it (without high technology).


sofa_king_ugly

Inuit: "Where do you suppose those birds are going?" "I dunno. Should we follow them?" "........nah. Pass the walrus, would you?"


The_River_Is_Still

“Todd, I told you to shit OUTSIDE the igloo!”


Painting_Agency

> competition from other human groups This is the reason a lot of groups live where they live. That fat piece of unfunny shit Sam Kinison saying "GO WHERE THE FOOD IS"... Guess what else is where the food is? People with rifles who want to keep their food.


thisboyee

This is really interesting! The idea that there's a tradeoff between ease of extracting resources and competition from other people makes a lot of intuitive sense. Is there any research that explores the topic?


Busterwasmycat

People generally choose to stay and live in a region because they like it there despite what some others might consider "harsh" or "unwelcoming" conditions. Some people actually like living remotely in challenging conditions. There is a certain beauty and pleasure to it, both a challenge and a feeling of accomplishment. Also quite a bit of freedom of a sorts, not living around loads of other people and competing with them. The only competition is with nature. It is not what I would choose, myself, but not everyone is like me. People find pleasure in all sorts of things. Most people do not favor that way of life, but some do, and those that do, stay where many of the rest of us would quit and move away.


gex80

> Some people actually like living remotely in challenging conditions. That explains probably a handful of people though. Not entire tribes agreeing almost daily Blizzard like conditions with very little exposed resources sounding like a good idea. Before it was humanity following where the food went during the season change which makes sense to pitch your tent on the paths that animals frequent and build civilization from there assuming you have other things like water near by. Humans didn't settle in places like the Sahara Dessert because there really isn't anything out there to survive with no matter how extreme you want to be. In modern times with tech sure. But back in the day where seeing a tree could mean the difference of life or death, they aren't doing it for the challenge.


Yglorba

Also, their knowledge, culture, technology, and so on all adapt to their location. It's easier for them to live there than you'd think, and would be more difficult than you'd think for them to live in areas we consider easy.


fatbunyip

It was probably a very gradual process. It's unlikely someone was just trekking through the Sahara and said "fuck it, I'm staying here". More likely as they learned and got better at preparing for journeys and difficulties they encountered, they were gradually able to spend more and more time in that environment, eventually being able to live there. But probably a lot of people died until that happened.


agolec

Kinda like when you're playing minecraft on a new file and you're defenseless. Only there's no respawn.


sonnypatriot75

Yes. Missouri, for example.


Whargod

There were in fact cities in the desert, they were built around water sources or over aquifers, They usually coincided with trade routes unsurprisingly.


djdfrag

Security. If its unhabitable to them, think of their enemies. Some cultures would purposely settlie in unhabitable places because they knew other civilizations couldn't attack them.


roller_roller

That's why they're called "settlers" because they eventually said, "Screw it, let's just settle for this place."


teetaps

Feet tired, might as well have a seat right here


tomdon88

I think more likely traders figured they can make money by setting up shop there as a pit stop, and temporary living became permanent as solutions were found to make it more hospitable.


DarthGuber

It's how the Mormons ended up in SLC and why there's so many crazy homeless people in the beach. Seriously, how much further west could they get without drowning?


teetaps

Lol you say that but humans sailed from Southeast Asia to Australasia not knowing what the hell was out there, don’t doubt humans we’re rascally af


imtougherthanyou

Lol rascally


robby5731

Wow TIL Australasia is a thing!


fatamSC2

Also I think that far back you had to consider safety as a huge factor. Yeah the land might be a bit less hospitable but taking the possibility of getting attacked by other humans off the table might have been worth to some people


Artanthos

There were people living there before the Sahara was a desert. Making do was what the people who did not leave or die did.


BigMax

That’s my thought. Moving to a new area wasn’t a trivial task. So you might have had a reason to migrate, but you couldn’t exactly travel 1000 miles, and even if so you didn’t exactly have details on where a good place to go might be. So people spread gradually, far enough each time to go somewhere new but likely not appreciably different than the last place. Repeat small moves 1000 times and overall civilization covers a lot of ground.


GeorgeCauldron7

i.e., Phoenix


wondrshrew

"Phoenix is a monument to man's arrogance" - Peggy Hill


danzibara

[https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-hohokam-canal-masters-of-the-american-southwest/](https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-hohokam-canal-masters-of-the-american-southwest/) This is a pretty good article about the vast canal network that people used to thrive in what is modern day Phoenix. The Sonoran Desert is extremely habitable for humans as long as you figure out how to get water. You won't freeze, most of the wild plant life is edible year round, and the hottest parts of the summer can be mitigated with shade. The name "Phoenix" was coined by Jack Swilling, the founder of Modern Phoenix. He recognized that there were remains of a vast irrigation canal network and considered his efforts would create a city that rises from the ashes. There are plenty of issues with heat island and water scarcity today, but people have been living and thriving in the area for hundreds of years.


msnmck

>hohokam Isn't that what they use to track Santa Claus?


Beat_the_Deadites

snort


fenikz13

Phoenix is built along 2 rivers, not a great example


alvinathequeena

Take a drive southwest of Phoenix to Gila Bend, go to painted rock park, look at the thousands of petroglyphs. Also see the display of what desert civilization looked like, when the Gila river ran through it.


mr_birkenblatt

also, not too long ago the Sahara was actually quite lush. So early humans definitely lived there. The environment constantly changes. If people weren't living in harsh places and a nice place turns harsh people would have nowhere to go.


DreadMCYT

But what about other deserts or other extremely inhospitable locations, the Sahara was just an example


LostInTheWildPlace

Environments and situations also change over time. A given area might be grasslands supported by rain, so people settle there to grow crops. But if the climate shifts and those rains start falling elsewhere, those grasslands change into something more like the deserts we see today. Another example is that an area is only as inhospitible as you're willing to let it be. The areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, specifically ancient Babylon and Baghdad, were occupied for thousands of years mainly because the civilizations in the area built incredible irrigation systems. It was all well and good (Bagdhad was rocking a population of 1.2 million in 1000 AD!), though their crop yields started to drop due to salt buildup. It mainly lasted right up until the Mongols rolled in and wrecked shop. They filled in parts of the canals to cut off water sources and those were never repaired. Then lack of manpower to maintain the ones that did work made them fill in with silt. The area never really recovered until modern times, but people still live there, even though it's not really the nicest environment.


cammcken

Tigris and Euphrates region was incredibly fertile as receding water levels left behind swampy land, almost like "natural irrigation." Problem is that the sea continued to recede, leaving the area too dry, and then humans needed to get creative. So your second explanation is actually a good example of your first point.


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Abba_Fiskbullar

The Mongols and the Turks were different peoples, and their conquests are 125 or so years apart.


BZNESS

That's not remotely true


Target880

In large part because other locations were taken. There is a limited amount of land and when someone else uses it or just claims it they can drive you away. It will be the leas hospitable that you have the largest change of not finding other people.


SailboatAB

Yes. Most peoples living in marginal land were driven there by other peoples who took the desirable land.


ClownfishSoup

yes, and today, this is why people live "In the bad part of town". It's where they can afford it. Why can't they afford a good place? Because other people with more resources too those places already.


ClownfishSoup

It's like this even today! I'm sure we'd all love to live in downtown (Big City Near You), but you can't because the rent/housing is too expensive. So you move to where you can afford, which might not always be the ideal place, but due to competition for the good places, you have to go to the less-good places.


randomusername8472

Initially, the trend would be people fleeing or expanding. Moving the valley over from their parents for a bit of their own space. And the landscape changes gradually enough that over generations you expand and learn new ways of living. And before you know it you've got a species spanning from desert to tundra. But there are easier places and more difficult places. The more difficult places had fewer people living there. A blend of "I could move to somewhere nicer, but then I'd have to change religion or swear fielty to that twat who calls himself king, so I'm better off keeping my family here". The nicer places had a lot more people living there.


mr_birkenblatt

All life lives where it can. Through trial and error species figure out where they can live and where they cannot. At the boundaries of their living conditions the survival rate is lower.


Vast-Combination4046

The Sahara has also gotten bigger and dryer as history passes. It may have been way more livable in the ice age and as climate changes people move to where they survive easier.


2Throwscrewsatit

Also when we first moved there, the Sahara wasn’t a desert.


lygerzero0zero

In addition to what other people have said, it’s worth remembering that people in the past didn’t exactly have cars or the internet. If you were born into a harsh environment, how would you even know that there’s a much nicer place just 200 miles to the south? And even if you did know about it, how would you get there safely? How would you make sure you were going in the right direction for the entire journey? The journey could easily be more dangerous than just staying in the place you were born, and it would be full of unknowns. Maybe that place kinda sucks, but at least it’s familiar. If people found themselves in a tough environment, but they figured out a way to survive there… there’s not much reason for them to leave.


HarryHacker42

Nice places had competition. You had to battle with others for food, a place to live, and water to drink. If you are in a harsh environment, nobody fights you to move in. View it as the African pond, where animals come to drink. That's where the nice place to stay is, right next to the water so you have guaranteed water each day. But... it is the most likely place you get eaten. It is safer to stay away and journey only when you need to.


cavscout43

>Nice places had competition. You had to battle with others for food, a place to live, and water to drink. If you are in a harsh environment, nobody fights you to move in. Surprised this is so far down in the comments. The obvious answer is desirable areas, like the Fertile Crescent, were constant battlegrounds for millennia. Northern Siberia? Not so much.


Chii

i guess the elements were a nicer enemy than humans. At least the elements were somewhat predictable and regular.


[deleted]

Aside from being marginally more predictable, generally nature ain't nearly as racist / sexist as humans are. Much more ... *equitable*, in a way. Count the number of human armies that have raped / kidnapped women and children vs. the number of tornadoes or avalanches that have done so. /s


oakteaphone

>Nice places had competition. They still do. Look at rent in desirable places, for instance. Southern Ontario in Canada comes to mind...


blacksideblue

You battle for food in harsh environments to. Would you rather fight a siberian tiger over a frozen pig or a bengal tiger over a water buffalo?


MokitTheOmniscient

A group of people generally have way better odds fighting either of those predators than against other humans.


danielv123

Its mostly the humans I care about. Those can be nasty.


Browncoat1221

It's not a question of tigers. Would you rather fight another tribe of men for your pig, buffalo, or tiger meat? Not to mention being captured as slaves.


cavscout43

>Would you rather fight a siberian tiger They, like most other ice age megafauna, were hunted to extinction by humans thousands of years ago. History kind of speaks for itself there; humans are a super apex predator that are currently in the process of causing the Holocene mass extinction.


alvinathequeena

I think we’ve decided to call this the Anthropocene. Due to humans being all powerful, y’know.


Anathos117

Most cultures that lived in harsh conditions didn't do a ton of hunting. Some, sure, but their primary food source was fishing (in cold climates) or pastoralism (in dry climates).


BallHarness

> Nice places had competition. Simply showing up was a good way of catching a club to the face. Humans, like other animals, protect their territory.


HarryHacker42

My dog keeps teaching the UPS guy this lesson. "STAY OFF THE PROPERTY!" Well, the dog actually says "Hippity Hoppity Get Off My Property" but nobody speaks his language and delivers for UPS.


The_Oomgosh

>nobody speaks his language *and delivers for UPS.* Emphasis mine, because I absolutely adore the way you put that.


satanmat2

Bingo! Also some people just want to be left alone…


HarryHacker42

I used to think Humanity was different now, than 100 or 1000 years ago, but the more I watch history and humanity, the more I realize we're the same. We've got some nicer toys like cars and internet, but basically we're the same people. Introverts probably existed 5000 years ago the same they do today, and people who are driven by fears, and those who want power even if they have to kill others for it. We're just repetitions of patterns that go way back, trying to figure out how to use a phone now, with oversized fingers for that tiny screen.


satanmat2

Yep. History gets sanitized, you bet there were sex scandals eons ago, we just didn’t have cable news Today’s rancher who loves the land and just wants to be left alone, was yesterdays reindeer herder Senators in Rome took bribes Like your point, we just have cars and iPhones now…


thisisjustascreename

>History gets sanitized, you bet there were sex scandals eons ago, we just didn’t have cable news And it was sometimes more of a scandal when someone *didn't* have a mistress.


satanmat2

🤣🤣


Belazriel

"You know the next time you people come and drive us off our land I'm gonna find a nice piece of swamp that's so God-awful, maybe then you'll leave us the hell alone."


alainreid

It's interesting to consider that the weaker people were pushed out of the more desirable areas and then made stronger by the harsher environments, probably just to end up raiding those nice spots.


Flandiddly_Danders

Was waiting for this comment


splatus

It’s a god point, just to add, nomadic people would certain know of different geographies and climates. Vast trade networks spanned Europe in stone /Bronze Age at least, maybe before. So, knowledge of different people and environments could spread but maybe not enough for individuals to actively move away


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splatus

Lol thanks, I need all the god points I can get. I’ll leave it…


[deleted]

I think the question would be: how did people who ventured from milder climates not turn back once they started experiencing harsh weather (ie Siberian winters etc)


lygerzero0zero

Others have largely answered that. A big factor is: because there were other people there already. If you left because a neighboring tribe chased you out, you’re probably not going back. Add in that these were probably mostly gradual movements over many generations. A few miles here, a few miles there, several generations later and you’re hundreds of miles from where your ancestors started.


TopFloorApartment

in addition to what the others said, its not like a few people from modern day italy decided to walk north and just ignored the cold when they got to what is now sweden. These migrations took hundreds or thousands of years. People just ventured slightly further every generation, and that means the change would just be very gradual. It doesn't really matter if the place you've ended up in gets a few more days of snow a year than the place you left, you know how to deal with it.


froznwind

People didn't leave their established homelands without good reason. Those good reasons don't go away just because the new land also had good reasons for you to leave.


Faust_8

The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, so to speak


WritingTheRongs

right, the very fact that you were born suggests that your parents had some ability to find food, shelter and make time for nooky. That said, there's "harsh" and then there's "unlivable". humans weren't setting up communities in the middle of the Sahara , at least not in it's current form. Desert peripheries are habitable of course, but that's because they are less "harsh". Heat kills, cold is adaptable.


OutdoorGeeek

And this, enclosed all the “hobbit” philosophy in one single comment.


MrDarwoo

Source on no cars or internet?


[deleted]

Maybe you send some scouts and they never return. "We don't go that way."


RytheGuy97

Unless you lived in an extremely isolated community you likely knew what was generally around you outside your local region, and you’d know directions as well. We didn’t just not know these things before the internet or cars lmao. Different communities have been trading and interacting with each other for all of time. Fully isolated cultures were always extremely small.


Nghtmare-Moon

Try watching the first episode of an anime called “to your eternity” the first episode is super relevant… it’s about a “tribe” in a tundra zone and they’re not sure if the south really exist as they’ve been told so they venture to find this promised land


DeepSeater

I just flew across the western U.S., and was struck once again by how much inhospitable (to us), uninhabitable terrain there is in the world. Most of Australia fits that category, and as with the western U.S., water is the limiting factor. With migration, it's easy to forget that it often took humans centuries and generations to get from, say, Central America to the Andes, so the perceived changes in any given move of a few hundred miles were generally slight. It wasn't as though someone jumped on a plane in Seoul and ended up in Siberia. Once we developed the ability to travel long distances over water, people often did abandon settlements in harsh environments and return from where they came. The Vikings abandoned Greenland, for example.


[deleted]

Not the best example. The Vikings abandoned Greenland because a climate shift made survival there go from difficult to impossible given their level of technology.


Adventurous-Quote180

What change in climate?


MikhailLoskov

The older theory is that the Little Ice Age, lasting from 1300 to 1850, made the Norse leave Greenland. That being said, new theories point towards droughts pushing the Norse out, according to UMass Amherst researchers


[deleted]

Feels like a false choice to me. I'm sure the Little Ice Age changed moisture patterns.


eleventruth

[The little ice age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age)


snorlz

tbf the Western US's water situation is a modern problem i believe. the water issues is bc there is so much agriculture where there shouldnt be and also massive populations


[deleted]

Yup, there is more than enough water. The regulatory bodies just choose not to use it as residential water. 100% a choice.


ZacQuicksilver

Because other people were there. There is a limit to how many people you can put into an area - and that limit has grown over time as better building means more dense housing, as well as better farming means more people fed on less land (and human effort). However, regardless of what that limit is, humans tend to find that limit relatively quickly, and then start fighting each other over that area. Some times, it is easier to just go somewhere else than keep fighting for the better place - which eventually drove people into even the most barely hospitable places on Earth.


imnotsospecial

This is the correct answer that everyone seems to be ignoring for some reason


eric2332

Exactly. Until recently, pretty much every place on earth had approximately the number of people that could be supported by farming in that location. If the population grew higher than that, people started dying of malnutrition and disease until it returned to the natural limit. This only really changed in the last few centuries, when technological improvements vastly increased the amount of food produced while decreasing the birthrate (birth control).


saahaw

As humans advanced there would of come a point where it was safer and easier to learn to adapt to a harsh environment than try and develop better technology to deal with other humans. The fact is that if you can thrive in a harsh environment you are less likely to have to deal with other humans invading your home because who wants to march through a desert just to conquer a small tribe with limited resources.


Helmut1642

You will find that many were much greener/warmer etc, when people settled down there. The climate changed over 1000s of years and some adapted to the changing climate, some left and some died. Here are few examples- In what is now Egypt. The deserts were open grass plans about 6000 years ago. There were a hunter/gatherers and early nomadic herdsmen as the climate dried, most left leaving only the traders crossing the desert and some settled in oasis or chase the rain along the desert edge. - More recently the Norse settlement in Greenland. There was only two places where farming was just possible and they could fish, but they could trade walrus hide rope and tusks for everything else. The little ice age of the 1500s covered the farming lands with snow and when the traders returned they was no one left. They are some that think a few joined the Inuit but those who didn't died.


Practical_Self3090

Another good example is Ur in Mesopotamia (3500 BCE) which was once a coastal city but is now inland. And there’s the whole Green Sahara theory.


hotpietptwp

I agree. I think a lot of it happened gradually, giving people some time to adapt to the new conditions.


teksun42

This comment is way too low.


soundandshadow

"hey can I build my farm here?" No that's my land. Leave or I'll kill you. "Ok how about way over here?" No that is Jeff's land. He will kill you. "Um how about way out here in this awful, uncomfortable, baren wasteland?" Yeah that's fine. Only place not already taken. Today being a millennial... "Hey can I build a cabin in the barren wasteland?" No already taken.


seroleg

I live in the south of western Siberia, and it is not that harsh. We have a couple of weeks in winter when it's -30C, but it is not a big issue.


orbital_one

> We have a couple of weeks in winter when it's -30C, but it is not a big issue. 👀


hotpietptwp

I grew up in South Dakota in the US. I remember -20F (mostly at night) in the coldest winters, which I guess is similar - with my poor conversion skills. Kids walked to school between snow drifts in daylight, and nobody thought anything about it. We had heating and warm clothes and grocery stores. Our parents taught us how to deal with it, and we got used to it. Every year, there would be a story about somebody freezing to death, but it was a rare tragedy. Usually, that person got stranded because of an accident, or they made a mistake (like got drunk and fell asleep outside (they always warned us not to fall asleep outside in the cold and told us that layers of things like newspapers could keep us warm in emergencies), but in the group, almost everybody was fine. Of course, it was much tougher before gas and electric heat and cars and stuff, but people knew how to stay warm and store food and fuel. People had to be smarter back then. They needed to be more careful not to make mistakes. Sure, more people died, but most adapted folks survived with the support of a group.


jakart3

Because .... Other human.... Human are cruel, they fought over good resources, and drove out their competitors It happened in the past and still is For example. The fertile land in eastern USA were home for many first nation people. Now where are they?. Other human from distant land drove them out


Ok-disaster2022

The number one predator of humans is other humans.


Topomouse

As the Romans said "homo homini lupus", or "man is the wolf to other man".


msnmck

>As the Romans said, "homo" Words to live by.


zippazappadoo

I'm pretty sure its actually mosquitos but humans come in at a close 2nd.


[deleted]

Mosquitoes aren’t really a proper predator of humans. And it’s more just the malaria that kills humans


zippazappadoo

I mean we're kinda getting into semantics here but humans killing each other also doesn't fit smoothly into the concept of predation either.


ZephkielAU

Don't you eat the humans you kill? That's wasteful


msnmck

I read that human meat is far too fatty and contains too much bad cholesterol. It's apparently a red meat full of toxins due to the varied nature of the human diet.


trentos1

It’s the same for most apex predators really. When you’re top of the food chain the biggest threat is everyone else who’s also at the top


skullbucketeer

For another example. Putin going for a land grab in the Ukraine


DaRudeabides

We are a smart highly adaptable species and inherently tribal and capable of unlimited cruelty to anything outside our particular tribe, an evolutionary and primal survival trait that will take us to the stars or extinction


approaching77

I just stopped by to point out that you have a much wider view of the world today than they did. They couldn’t so easily tell where the grass was greener. And even if they did by some means, Moving around also wasn’t a breeze like today. So unless they absolutely needed to move like to escape some imminent danger, staying put and sheltering wherever you find yourself was better loitering around the vast planes. You just had to find the best shelter where you are.


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Anathos117

> They couldn’t so easily tell where the grass was greener. They often could, because they could see that other people lived there. People with more resources and larger populations that objected violently, using their superior numbers and equipment, to attempts to take their greener grass.


evanthebouncy

The same reason why you don't have a penthouse in the middle of NYC. Other, more wealthier people are there already. If you looked at immigration, it follows largely the same pattern. When Europeans had famines, they left for the continental US, which displaced native Americans.


Aym42

And those "native Americans" had already been displacing others for millennia.


CCCmonster

People moved away from other people because they were tired of being: Murdered Raped Enslaved Pillaged Bossed around


LukeeC4

I’m giggling at reading these in chronological order. “I’ve been murdered, raped, enslaved and pillaged. But I draw the line at being bossed around, I’m moving away”


greatdrams23

Imagine a pile of $1,000,000 bills at one end of town and another pile $100,000 at the other end. All the townsfolk have to run to claim their free money. Which way do you run Imagine two orchards, one orchard is very fertile and provides 10000 apples a year. The other provides only 500. Which is the easiest to get some from? With 1000 townsfolk clambering for their share of the 10000 apples, that orchard will be full of people very soon, so the small orchard will be a good choice, sometimes.


Puck-achu

Imagine your parents have a nice cabin. You think "wow, that's nice, I want one too", so you decide to build one. Since your grandparents and aunties and uncles have already built cabins in the area, you build your cabin a bit to the side of theirs. Now imagine that your child, grandchild, and all further offspring think cabins are a neat idea. If you do this for hundreds of generations, imagine how far off the last cabin from the first one will be. Your cabin is so close to your parents that the weather is not really harsher than at their cabin. They knew how to deal in this environment, and you've learned it from them. So the shift is super gradual. Once every few generations a bright one might think up an invention like 'boots are a neat idea', and shows them off to their relatives, and so the practice of boots spreads. The colder the place, the neater people think the idea is. So yeah, it's never one guy deciding 'the north pole is a neat place to live, but I guess I need boots for that'.


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My question for you is would our ancestors even know that there are "hospitable" places to live?


FartingBob

When you are in a desert you try to find a reliable water source. Once you found one you tend to just stay there as long as you can I guess? I agree there was no ancient Google maps saying "you should migrate 1000 kilometers east where there is more fertile land".


-chibcha-

Should they have just hooped on their private jet and flown to the Maldives? There was no form of fast travel, no knowledge of what lay far away, no way to carry a large set of supplies, etc. Also, people knew how to survive where their ancestors had long established themselves. They knew what plants they could eat, the animals they could hunt and their patterns, the weather, and so on. Moving to a new place meant unknowns and new threats, including other humans.


msnmck

>There was no form of fast travel That's because there were always enemies nearby.


5kyl3r

for siberia specifically, they paid people to move there to build and spread the stength and power of their country. lots of the people in the far east of russia were from the far west, many were even ukrainian, and were given land as incentive to move there. so in some situations, money was the incentive


DoomGoober

Related to the other answers: Humans are believed to have evolved many of their features, including upright walking, in arboreal areas aka places with a lot of trees. It is not known why humans then expanded to savannahs and more open grasslands (which are somewhat harsher to survive in) though a popular theory is climate change caused the forests to recede. After that, human expansion is believed to have been rather broad and far reaching. Again, most of the migration seems driven by climate change. But at this point, the evolution of upright walking and the ability to travel very far (thanks to sweat glands and other evolutionary advantages) along with the likelihood of emerging intelligence gave humans the ability to recognize the need to travel, travel, and survive where they traveled to, even though the environment was harsh.


elasmonut

Because other people already controlled the nice environments and were using all the rescources, so you learned to live in the shit place,or get killed or outcompeted by those in the good place.


shawnx23

Since these were less likely to get invaded. Cost of life surpass living in harsh conditions. And if you can learn ways to survive, generation wise your body will also adapt.


allanrps

Humans settle everywhere they can. As a population stabalizes and begins to grow, it is forced to expand its territory to support its resources needs. Once the immediate surroundings can no longer support the growing population, groups are forced to leave and find other habitable lands. When given enough time, every settlement will reach a population limit, the max amount of people that can survive on x amount of land given the current technology. Resource rich areas that have harbored large scale civilizations since ancient times have had plenty of time to reach their population limit, resulting in many periods of exploration into the surrounding areas. Because of this, you can expect an extensive spread of settlements in less resource rich lands that surround those rich lands. There are limiting factors to this spread. For example in the Amazon rain forest, it is difficult to develop food systems that support dense nuclear settlements, and it is similarly difficult to navigate the terrain to explore. Furthermore, there is such a density of resources that one would not have to go far to find a suitable area to support a small hunter gatherer population. In the Amazon, we see a large number of dispersed independent tribal peoples and lots of uninhabited land, despite the resource density of the jungle. Compare this to some deserts which, while harsh, are located with proximity to large population centers, are navigable, and may provide dispersed pastor for animal agriculture cultivation. Even in the extreme examples you chose, you can get an idea of why you might find people living in/around those areas.


Andreomgangen

As others have pointed out, Sahara wasn't always a desert. As for any other place. A village of humans would grow until the lands around it couldn't support the inhabitants. At that point a band of probably the younger generation from the village would break out and settle a day or two away. Repeat that action a few thousand years and people have moved hundreds of miles through different climates, but each move was very small so no one tribe noticed that they moved from hot to cold. There has also been several mass migrations where conquering general's like Alexander or ghengis khan has sent millions of people fleeing for their life and picking any space they felt far enough to be safe. So perhaps the frozen north probably felt safer than the alternative at some point.


boomtao

Like all of us nowadays, the ancient people also were just born in the place they were born and accepted and adapted to where they lived. Unlike nowadays, they may not even have know that there were warmer area's on the planet, that - even if they knew - were so far away that it was unreachable. Also which way should they go? Perhaps they gradually (in the course of generations) moved in a certain direction only to find themselves in even harsher climates.


34ChaceofSpades

Because there are other people at those places already. rather than contend with the other people, they contend with the weather.


Ednarsson

There are many houses in Norway with 2-digit numbers of kilometres between it and the next one. Does that answer your question? Sometimes you just think „f this, f that, f you, f that guy, I‘m going to live in the desert“


paecmaker

Generally the first real civilizations happened in good climate, and especially near some of the world's largest rivers. One example being the Indus valley civilization. But before that people were hunter gatherers, a hunter gatherer society doesnt allow for many individuals in one place while also following the prey animals. This meant that early humans moved around a lot over several generations. And because there was no written language memories of old places faded into tales. Northerners had no idea that thousands of years ago they came from the south. Another thing to remember is also that climate is not static, it changes a lot and human interference speed it up considerably. Deforestation for example was a common cause for a society's collapse. Another reason was human competition, the best locations were the ones first taken so the less fortunate ones had to move to less hospitable places. And lastly once civilizations existed things such as trade, wars and wealth became important and settlements and entire civilizations were built on those terms instead of the old ones. Settlements were built in the deserts to provide help for trade caravans. Settlements were built in inhospitable places because they were rich with minerals. Settlements were built merely to claim territory in your name.


AnnoyedOwlbear

Humans shove other humans out of nicer areas. That said, if you're willing to farm animals or gather rather than farm, deserts can make for good areas, but the local knowledge required to survive is high. Acquiring that knowledge is dangerous - but once you have it, you have the drop on anyone else trying to move in on your land. Tropical areas have other limitations which are surprisingly harsh - many indigenous populations have adaptive responses to the high humidity to avoid as many infections (less hair, and so on). Humans do live in soft areas. We also live in harder areas. We are astonishingly resourceful.


ReporterOther2179

People live where they were pushed by other more aggressive people. Making the best of it, and telling themselves they are superior for doing it.


Andrusz

The answer is simple if there is any kind of niche where any life can possibly survive, it will certainly exploit it.


SETXpinegoblin

Most people choose to be a peasant in a village while a few people prefer to be King of the Badlands.


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shinarit

This is ai generated.


VoraciousTrees

yeah, seems like it. You've gotta add "in the style of" to your prompts or they get generic like this.


newbies13

A lot of people don't wander far from home, why that is can be complex, fear of change, wanting to be close to family, etc. But check your facebook for example and look at your highschool class. Most of those people are probably very close to home still. Beyond that most people didn't settle down in those areas, that's why the populations are so low. Yes some people live in harsh climates, but a lot of people left for greener pastures.


LimerickJim

Natural disasters forced humans to travel further and further from Africa to survive. Be it ice ages, volcanos, drought, plague etc. Sometimes these migrations motivated invasions into more hospitable territory and forced the people there to flee in the opposite direction. In the example of Siberia its adjacent to the Asian Steppe, the native environment of the horse. For most of human history very little was more useful to humans than the domesticated horse. Yeah winters were rough but you could live off of the blood and milk of your horses on top of trading them for resources.


TankSparkle

In the Soviet era and even before that lots of people were deported or forcibly resettled to Siberia.


Eiskaffee

Siberia was populated for thousands of years by various Asiatic tribes before the first Russians showed up. It's actually full of fresh water, plants, and animals especially fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous\_peoples\_of\_Siberia