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From: Mikko <mikko.levanto@iki.fi>
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology.paleo
Subject: Re: Earth's magnetic pole shift: Sunscreen, clothes, caves may have helped Homo sapiens survive 41kya
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:50:01 +0300
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On 2025-04-19 05:48:02 +0000, Primum Sapienti said:

> https://phys.org/news/2025-04-earth-magnetic-pole-shift-sunscreen.html
> 
> The team found that the North Pole wandered
> over Europe when the magnetic field's poles
> started to flip positions, a natural process
> that has happened around 180 times over
> Earth's geological history. While the
> magnetic reversal didn't complete at the
> time, the magnetic field weakened to cause
> aurora to occur over most of the globe, and
> allowed more harmful UV light to come in from
> space.

Presence or absence of aurora borealis does not significantly affect
UV radiation from space. Most UV comes from Sun. Auroras themselves
produce some ultraviolet but much less that Sun. Air under auroras
stops most of UVB and all of UVC, which are more harmful than UVA and
visible light.

> Around the same time, Homo sapiens appear to
> have started making tailored clothing and
> using ochre, a mineral that has sun-protective
> properties when applied to the skin, with
> greater frequency. These behaviors could have
> contributed to their spread throughout Europe
> and Asia at a time when the Neanderthal
> population was declining.

Another possibility is that Europe received enough immigrants from more
densely populated areas to compensate the greater mortality, be it caused
by auroras or coldness or something else.

-- 
Mikko