Needling History

These last couple of days have been almost the same as the average temperatures during the last ice age. Can you imagine, with winter weather typically lasting ten months each year.

Neanderthals went extinct during the final dip of the ice age, 25,000 years ago. The last of them huddled in caves in Gibraltar, at the southern most tip of Spain. Cro-Magnon (homo sapiens) spread to cover Spain thereafter, but could not go further north because all the fertile fields and forests of France were arctic tundra.

What was the difference? Perhaps the bone needle allowing Cro-magnons to tailor skins to fit limbs in layers and add differing skins to prevent frost bite to the face. These skills are practiced by the Inuit today in the Arctic.