The Science Of Cold — And Why Indigenous Bodies Were Not The Same Bodies

One dimension of Arctic survival that researchers explored in the second half of the twentieth century was the physiological adaptation that Arctic Indigenous peoples had developed over thousands of years — adaptations that were not simply matters of learned technique but of inherited biology.

Studies of Iñupiat and other circumpolar Indigenous populations found specific metabolic adaptations that distinguished them from populations without long-term Arctic ancestry.

The metabolism of fat, the regulation of body temperature, the physiological responses to extreme cold — these showed measurable differences between populations with deep Arctic ancestry and populations without it.