What type of cold climate adaptations did the archaic Homo sapiens make?

Question

What type of cold climate adaptations did the archaic Homo sapiens make?

Answer 1

The first two answers were excellent.  In addition, humans that moved into colder areas typically became larger and more robust to reduce the surface area of the body.  Arms and legs would be shortened also to reduce surface area.  These features can be seen in Eskimoes as well as others.  Eskimoes (or their asian ancestors) evolved an extra layer of fat on the eye to help protect with the cold.

Answer 2

Archaic Homo Sapiens could make warm clothes from animal skins, build shelters against the cold, and had mastered fire to heat his shelters.

The use of his brain to figure out problems is the greatest adaptation man has made.

Answer 3

Like Mato said, mainly making clothes from animal furs and using fire to heat their shelters.

Answer 4

A physiological adaptation that appears to have taken place due to cold climates is a reduction in melanin in our skin.

Melanin is a pigment in human skin that protects skin cells from absorbing too much ultraviolet radiation.  In a hot, sunny climate, melanin is important because it is easy to get sunburned, or even get skin cancer, from too much sunlight.

In a colder, darker climate, too much melanin may actually cause problems depending on what kind of diet a person eats.  Vitamin D is produced in a person's skin via an interaction with compounds in the cell and ultraviolet light from the sun.  In a dark, cold climate, where there is less sunlight and people wear more clothing, vitamin D deficiency can become very likely.

Thus, humans that had less melanin in their skin were more easily able to get the UV rays they needed to prevent vitamin D deficiency.  This fact seems to have led to an increased survival rate for people with lighter skin tones.

This seems to be the reason that Scandinavians tend to be so pale, people around the Mediterranean tend to be more swarthy, and people in the tropics tend to be quite dark.

In the modern world, we tend to get vitamin D from a variety of sources, milk especially.  So, now, people with darker skin can live fairly safely in areas with diminished sunlight.  However, back in the prehistoric times, maintaining a balanced diet was much more difficult, and something like the amount of melanin in your skin could really affect your chances of survival.