From first-hand experience (my parents are anthropologists): Spending nights in a small earth-floor house with a wood fire in the middle is warm and convenient

From first-hand experience (my parents are anthropologists): Spending nights in a small earth-floor house with a wood fire in the middle is warm and convenient for cooking but the smoke is absolutely miserable, even after you sort of get used to it. It stings your eyes and your throat, chokes you, and long-term exposure causes all sorts of nasty health consequences (lung cancer, ...). It’s much worse than the second-hand smoke from the smokiest cigarette-smoke-filled room you have ever experienced. (When people argue that the pre-industrial past was better because there was no air pollution, it’s hard not to laugh.) It’s a kind of romantic rustic experience occasionally in your life just to get an idea what rural people’s lives have been like throughout history and for a change from a sanitized suburban lifestyle, but it’s very unhealthy for people who have to live that way all the time. It’s little surprise that when people obtain the resources and infrastructure to switch to some other method of heating/cooking, they leap at the chance.