Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts? The question so intrigued four scientists - all non-Bedouins - that they did an experiment. Their study, called Why Do Bedouins Wear Black Robes in Hot Deserts?, was published in the journal Nature a quarter of a century ago.
“It seems likely,” the scientists wrote, “that the present inhabitants of the Sinai, the Bedouins, would have optimised their solutions for desert survival during their long tenure in this desert….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
Posted
Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 12:01 am
under Newspaper column.
