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Nomadic Peoples Brave the Most Extreme Weather Conditions
They Follow A Lifestyle Thousands of Years Old
by Ali Khan, age 15
With more than seven billion people living on Earth, things can get pretty crowded.
Much
of the developed world is situated in temperate climates where life is
easy to sustain. This kind of weather is neither too hot nor too cold;
rainfall assures adequate crop growth. But this luxurious climate is not
a reality for everybody in the world.
Life is considerably more
difficult for those who live in deserts where the temperatures are
extreme and precipitation is rare. Desert climates are often so harsh
that there isn’t enough food for humans. To survive conditions, some
people, called nomads move around and scavenge for food, water and
fertile land.
Most of the world’s deserts are considered hot
deserts, where less than 10 inches of rain falls each year.
Consequently, these deserts cannot support complex vegetation. People
and wildlife have to adapt and endure to this scorching environment. Hot
deserts can be found on every continent except Antarctica. For example,
the Kurds are nomads that live in the desert of Kurdistan, Iraq. They
herd cattle and live in tents.
Cold deserts, like hot deserts,
are very arid, but have a bitter, frigid atmosphere. The Arctic and
Antarctic regions are both considered cold deserts. The main form of
precipitation in a cold desert is snow or fog. Cold deserts are covered
in snow and are frozen for most of the year. In areas where the snow
melts for a brief summer season, mosses and short grasses grow,
providing nourishment for the desert’s inhabitants. Nomads of a cold
desert collect food by hunting wildlife on the frosty shore and ice
surface. The Saami people live in northern Scandinavia and train
reindeer to pull their sleds across the land.
Nomads are forced
to deal with hardships like the blazing sun or the frigid ice of a
desert environment. They have to scrounge for bare necessities, but they
survive, by following a way of life that is thousands of years old.
[Source: How People Live: On The Move]
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