The following is an extract from Our Human Story, a newsletter about human evolution. Sign up to receive it for free in your inbox every month.
Earth has plenty of places that are difficult to live in. Hot and dry deserts like the Sahara and Atacama; cold and windy deserts like Antarctica; the constantly shifting ice packs of the Arctic. Nowadays humans live in pretty much all of them, venturing far outside the mosaic of grasses, trees and lakes…