Younger Dryas Term Analysis

The Younger Dryas had arrived, and the world was changed.

Though humanity would survive, the short-term impact, especially for those populations that had moved north, was devastating. In less than a generation, virtually every learned method of survival—from the shelters they built to the hunting they practiced—was inadequate.

But what if a temporary diabetes-like condition occurred in a person who had significant brown fat living in an ice age environment? Food would probably be limited, so dietary blood-sugar load would already be low, and brown fat would convert most of that to heat, so the ice age “diabetic’s” blood sugar, even with less insulin, might never reach dangerous levels. Modern-day diabetics, on the other hand, with little or no brown fat, and little or no expo- sure to constant cold, have no use—and thus no outlet—for the sugar that accumulates in their blood.