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How the human body’s cooling system works?
Heat can be deadly, but evolution has equipped us with an excellent system for cooling a hot body. Will it be enough for a warming climate and the associated heat waves that have been increasing in frequency for two decades?
Our Stone Age ancestors lived in caves and began to clothe themselves for one basic reason — to be at least somewhat independent of the weather and climate. In caves you could hide from a downpour, a gale or a storm. First of all, however, they protected against extreme temperatures — in summer they cooled, in winter they warmed. Annual and daily temperature fluctuations inside the caves are small, usually not much different from the average annual air temperature in the area. But from time to time one had to leave this cozy rock retreat, if only to look for something to eat. That’s when clothing came in handy.
It will probably forever remain a mystery when our ancestor first wore leather or fur clothing. Direct evidence, in the form of remnants of such clothing, had no chance of surviving to our times. However, based on indirect evidence, i.e. genetic studies reconstructing the history of the human louse and its division into two subspecies: Clothes louse and head louse, scientists have come to the conclusion that we started dressing about 170,000 years ago. This is when, according to the calculations of geneticists, the…
