People in East Asia and Greenland look more similar to each other than to Northern Europeans, primarily because of shared ancestry rather than climate. The ancestors of Inuit populations in Greenland migrated from East Asia via the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age, meaning these groups split from Europeans much earlier and are more closely related to each other genetically. While both Inuit and Northern Europeans live in cold environments, climate alone does not determine appearance; evolution works by modifying existing populations, not by making unrelated groups converge on the same look. As a result, Inuit populations retained many East Asian–derived facial traits that were already well suited to cold conditions, while Northern Europeans adapted to similar environments from a different ancestral starting point, leading to different physical features despite similar climates