I had a *professor, once, summarize the ENTIRE Mideast Conflict (of the last few thousand years) as “It’s hot. And there’s not a lot of water.”
* Accreditations out the wazoo; Grew up with archeologist parents IN the ME, Ivy League US Rhodes Scholar, Oxbridge & Sorbonne both postgrad & lecturer, former ambassador to XYZ, ABC, 123… the experts’ expert on the Middle East, who was only teaching at our school whilst her husband underwent cancer treatments, locally. We’d never have gotten someone of her caliber, otherwise. 3 cheers a world class cancer institute a mile down the road. (He survived). And she still REDUCED the entire conflict to “It’s hot. And there’s not a lot of water.”
***
Anytime a person’s body struggles to maintain core temp? (One of many factors in homeostasis, but as basic as food/water/shelter in terms of physiological needs; homeostasis is the body’s ability to maintain balance. Whether it’s too hot, or too cold, it will have to WORK to maintain homeostasis. When the body is working hard? Zeh BRAIN is working hard. Allowing little room for “extras” like polite society rules, so people get a bit feral).
It’s harder for the body to cool itself off, than to warm itself up… that’s why athletes attempting to lose weight -or- superstress do so in high heat & plastic wrappings… but???
Depending on HOW your body is used to managing temps, matters.
70F // 20C
- Many people will be building fires, climbing into sheepskin & blankets, shivering constantly, attempting to warm up. Because they’re COLD.
- Many people will feel perfect.
- Many people will be shedding every last article of clothing, sweating buckets, flat out on the floor, with a fan blowing over trays of ice attempting to cool down. Because they’re HOT.
- The c-c-cooooold! People usually live in 90-120 heat (without air con)
- The purrrrfect! People usually live in 60-80 heat
- The OMFG It’s a mile to the sun! People usually live in 30-60 “heat” (and heat, whether clothing or housing, is expensive, so they short themselves).
(People who live in the arctic/subarctic tend to have a curious acclimatization of BOTH 90+ and -20…. That I’m just not going to go into right at the moment. Ditto high desert folk who lives days in 120 & nights below freezing).
Clearly, I picked a middling temp, to show how people acclimatized to the other ends of the spectrum react, physically, to what seems warm/cold to others. As the temperate band is extremely narrow on this planet? (As is the first world oasis of dial-a-temp?) MOST people are either acclimatized to the cold or heat.
IT MATTERS SO MUCH (what you’re acclimated to) that it. changes. facial. reconstruction. algorithms. Because if you take a skeleton and flesh it out like someone comes from a cold, temperate, or hot climate? They look like 3 different people. 3 RADICALLY different people. More so than changing ethnicity. THAT MUCH is kind of insane for most people to wrapt their brains around, but it’s true. If you don’t have physiological markers telling you where someone 1. Grew Up & 2. Has lived for the past 7 years? You will not be able to reconstruct a face so the people who knew them recognize them.
