The words "ice" and "snow" are synonymous with cold, so when it comes to "igloos made of snow", no one will associate it with warmth, but it is such an igloo, but the Inuit people have survived on it in a low temperature environment of minus 50 ° C, and have been passed on for generations.
The Inuit have another name, "Eskimos", and many people may be more familiar with this name, but the Inuit do not like and do not recognize this name, because "Eskimos" were given to them by native American Indians, meaning "raw meat eaters", which contains contemptuous meanings, and the beginning of this story dates back a long time. The Inuit were not white, but the same yellow race as us, who did not first live in the cold Arctic.
Once upon a time, as the climate turned cold, the Inuit began to be forced to move north, unaware that what awaited them in the north was the endless snow and ice.
Some Inuit stopped in the Siberian wilderness, while others came to Alaska. Alaska was the territory of native Indians, so conflict broke out and the Inuit were forced to continue northwards, finally settling near the North Pole. Because the entire migration history of the Inuit people has taken place in the icy wasteland, they have long had a tolerance for cold beyond other peoples, but even so, to survive in the Arctic at minus 50 ° C, they still need a warm residence, and the only building material that can be found here is ice and snow, so a unique building is born, that is, the igloo.
Igloos are made of snow, but the snow that builds the igloo is not ordinary snow, but snow bricks, which are made by pressing, the density is much greater than ordinary snow, and its hardness is comparable to that of fired earth bricks.
Although the hardness of snow bricks is comparable to that of earth bricks, it is not the same thing as earthen bricks, which contains the mystery of keeping the igloo warm. Although the snow brick is made of pressing, the hardness is not to be said, but it is snow after all, so there are actually many gaps inside, and these gaps store air. The large thermal conductivity of the air can be said to be very poor, so the heat inside the house and outside the house is isolated, although the outside is already a low temperature of minus 50 ° C, the temperature inside the igloo can still be guaranteed to be about 0 ° C, for the inuit people with strong cold tolerance, such a temperature is enough to survive.
In order to make the environment inside the igloo more comfortable, sometimes the Inuit would gas stove in the igloo and sleep shirtless.
Wait, won't the ice and snow melt during the fire? First of all, the pressed snow bricks are different from ordinary scattered snow and are not so easy to melt. Secondly, although the snow bricks are not easy to melt, but the snow is snow after all, making a fire in it will indeed lead to the slow melting of these snow bricks, with the gradual melting of the snow bricks, the warmth of the igloo will become worse, but when the warmth of an igloo becomes very poor, it can only be abandoned and a new house can be built. Fortunately, the cost of the igloo built with snow bricks is very low, so if it is broken, it will be replaced without pain. Although the Inuit people maintain a relatively primitive state of life, as long as they are people, they cannot avoid food, clothing, shelter and transportation, and the igloo only solves the problem of "living", in other aspects, how do the Inuit survive?
In the icy Arctic, it is impossible to grow vegetables, and the plants that can be found here are fine and tough grasses except moss, so the Inuit people have no chance to eat fruits and vegetables.
If you're a meatless person, you might be interested in the Inuit diet, with reindeer, seals, and even polar bears on the Plate. The Inuit diet allowed them to get more fat from animals to improve their ability to withstand the cold. But don't get too excited too soon, they are all eaten raw. Interestingly, Inuit people's nutritional intake is significantly uneven, and eating raw meat can also lead to parasitic infections, and even so, their average life expectancy can reach 68 years.
For the Inuit, who lived in a more primitive state, food and clothing were not separated, and the fur of the animals they ate was their cold clothing, which we called "fur" in our place.
Of course, the Inuit wore fur only for survival, not for fashion. In terms of travel, the Inuit means of transportation is mainly composed of three parts: reindeer, erha and sleigh, interestingly, in the ice and snow of the North Pole is extremely difficult to identify the direction, and the Inuit in the absence of any modern navigation tools rarely get lost, it relies on the observation of animal behavior, it can be seen that in the matter of identifying the direction, animals are indeed much more powerful than humans. In our opinion, the living environment of the Inuit people is very harsh, and we cannot understand why they did not leave this land of ice and snow, perhaps this is "the joy of the fish without knowing the fish".