The Hot Arctic and Cold Sahara

Imagine Eskimos living in the desert or Africans calling the North Pole their home. Now that sounds absolutely ridiculous but what if the world had turned itself upside down and this was the reality?

Would they be able to survive?

Perhaps they would. These places have extreme weather conditions and people have survived extremely hot and intensively cold days so perhaps living in a completely opposite extreme climate isn’t that hard after all. All they have to do is switch their mode of thinking from either bitter cold to hot or from blazing hot to cold. If they continue to live by the basic needs of life, then survival in either climate would be a synch.

The Inuit up in Northern Canada use caribou and wolverine fur coats to shield them from bitter icy cold winds of the Arctic. They use seal leather boots to keep their feet warm while walking on the hard icy grounds of the cold desert and if they encounter a snow storm, they don’t have to worry about getting a frost bite from wet shoes.

Traveling across the globe to the Algerians living in the Sahara desert, these people also need to protect themselves, but this time, it’s from the scorching hot equatorial sun. Covering their entire body with a lose cotton garment is important to keep cool. But it’s pretty ironic that even the people of the hot climate have to cover their heads with a type of turban commonly called a howli . The attire and fashion in both regions are definitely starting to seem like they have a direct connection with each other. Maybe Eskimos really did live in the desert once upon a time.

Diet for both weathers is simple and yet, extremely nutritious. People in Greenland rely on the meat of seals and fish and milk from the common Arctic mammal, the reindeer. Similarly, in the hot desert, the Arabs bake bread in the heat of the sands. They eat dates from palm trees, dry nuts like pistachios and almonds, and rely on meat and milk from camels, the only domestic animal of the desert. Of course, means of vegetation in both climates is out of the question. No plants can grow, either in the cold frozen grounds of the Ice Desert or in the hot dry sands of the Sahara. Since each diet is so similar to the basic needs of life, perhaps Africans living in the North Pole is starting to look like a possible idea after all.

Means of transportation in the Arctic is essentially the dogsled, driven by a trusty pack of huskies. Similarly, the only vehicle in the Sahara is the camel, otherwise known as the ‘Ship of the Desert.”

Alaskan Eskimos set up accommodation in igloos made from none other than the enormous resource of Ice and Snow. The Sahara Desert’s Libyan residents stay in tents made from linen or cotton.

Just because it is cold up in the Yukon, doesn’t mean that the people don’t have polar bears and wolves that will use them as a source of nutrition. There are dangers of other living creatures, even in the Arctic. The people of Egypt and Sudan also need to keep away from poisonous scorpions and snakes that would otherwise make them target practice.

The coldest recorded temperature in the north was -63 degrees Celsius and the desert’s hottest temperature was 58 degrees Celsius. If you round that off that’s almost a 100 degrees Celsius difference. Even though these numbers are the one contrasting element, it is common that their rainfall measurement will always lay in the zeros. What does this mean for the people who live in these conditions? Just that they both experience different climates, but at the same time, they have to survive by taking into account the extreme nature of their region.

Surviving in the Arctic is not so different from surviving in the Sahara. Both geographical landscapes are extreme with every single attribute that make up each region.

Extreme weather conditions, scarce food, difficult transportation, need for physical protection against the weather, same dangers from predators, they essentially mean that the people of Iqualuit and Alaska could possibly be relatives of the people in Tunisia and Niger.

Even though both climates bring different types of difficulties, ultimately the people of both regions have only one type of lifestyle, the simple one.