Here is what the wilderness did to them: Jews were, by and large, a people of towns. Merchants, craftsmen, scholars, professionals. They were not woodsmen. They were not hunters. They did not know how to build shelters in a swamp or find food in a frozen forest.

So in other words, they were not the fittest. Seems odd for "god's chosen people" to be unable to compete with a troop of boy scouts.