Migration is a Human Experience, A Brief History of Our Global Diaspora
Photo Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals. Photos: Bell & Daldy, Aristeas, Isaac Newton, Thomas Richards, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Migration and Movement Is a Human Experience
This week’s focus: Historical Literacy 101, or facts we should know about human history but likely weren’t taught.
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is under XX words, an estimated X-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
For our theme this month, we’re examining how migration and movement is a human experience.
Often, migration (and especially immigration) is spoken about as if it’s a particularly current event — as if people around the world have only been “immigrating” or migrating to new places in recent decades or centuries.
However, for the vast majority of our collective history, humans were on the move, living a nomadic lifestyle. Many were foragers and hunter-gatherers (and some still are today).
Though many people began to settle around 12,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended and the climate began to warm and become more stable, humans have historically been a group that moves — sometimes by choice, or in search of opportunity, and sometimes not by choice, through violent acts of force. To this day, people continue to migrate, often in search of safety and refuge, escaping from war, climate disaster, and other extreme challenges. There are many reasons and stories, spanning thousands of years.
What’s relatively new are geopolitical borders. And, the laws and policies around immigration, which create and perpetuate ideas about who belongs and who does not belong. If we don't unpack this history, then we are at risk of supporting ideas — like the binary around belonging, who’s legally invited and who’s denied — as the natural order of things, instead of viewing them as social, legal, political constructs.
When discussing the movement of people, especially with children, starting with the global diaspora may provide a more humanizing lens to launch the discussion. We may ask: How is migration part of the human experience? And eventually move into: How do modern ideas around immigration — including laws and policies — shape how we perceive who gets to belong?
We’ll examine such ideas in this month’s newsletters. Today, we’ll start with our global diaspora.
Where Does the Human Story Begin? “An Intertwined Story of Migration, Transitions, and Exchanges.”
Throughout modern history, there’s been much debate about the birthplace of our humanity. However, for the past few decades, there’s been substantial scientific consensus that our human story begins in Africa.
As described in a recent newsletter, Who Is Mitochondrial Eve?, human evolution is complex. When attempting to illustrate it, the path of human evolution would look more like intricate tree branches than something linear. (This six-minute video, Seven Million Years of Human Evolution, by American Museum of Natural History does a great job of capturing and visualizing this complexity.)
And while other hominins, or ancient human relatives, lived in various continents, it’s more and more clear that the lineage and genus of Homo sapiens sapiens (and yes, we mean sapiens sapiens) begins in Africa.
Where exactly the human story begins in Africa is still up for debate, with the vast majority of scientists postulating that we likely lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, in many locations across Africa.
As stated in this PBS Eons video: “Genetic evidence [shows] that we can, indeed, trace the initial origins of our species to the African continent… We can trace our emergence to multiple ancient [human] populations that were scattered across Africa.”
It is also believed that there was notable human movement within the continent: “Instead of thinking about our origins like a tree with a single trunk, perhaps the more accurate view is a complex braided stream — an intertwined story of migration, transitions, and exchanges between various ancient populations that unfolded over vast time and space.”
A Brief History of Our Global Diaspora
While modern humans evolved and migrated across the African continent, at some point, bands of humans began to migrate out of Africa as well, marking the first steps of a global diaspora.
Timelines range for when some humans began to leave Africa and enter new regions, like the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, with estimates spanning about 60 to 70,000 years ago, and some as far back as 120,000+ years ago. This range may reflect the reality that there were multiple bands of humans who left Africa over time, likely ranging in size and success of passing along genetics.
The Max Planck Institute reports: “Recent studies do confirm that all present-day non-African populations branched off from a single ancestral population in Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. This could indicate that there were multiple, smaller dispersals of humans out of Africa beginning as early as 120,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal 60,000 years ago.”
Once some humans left Africa, it is largely postulated among scientific communities that they moved across the continents in a somewhat eastward direction.
This map of our global diaspora may serve as a guide to visualize the steps humans took over tens of thousands of years to eventually populate much of the world.
After migrating out of Africa, it is widely believed that some humans first moved into the Arabian Peninsula, and from there, headed southeast, toward Australia (perhaps around 50,000 years ago), or headed toward Europe or Eastern Asia (likely between 35-40,000 years ago). It’s largely theorized that some of the people who went to Eastern Asia made their way to the Americas (perhaps between 15-20,000 years ago, or earlier, as some findings suggest people arrived to the Americas by boat around 30,000 years ago). Some of the people who made their way to Eastern Asia and/or Australia likely traversed and successfully populated regions of Oceania, as recently as a few thousand years ago.
What Could Spur a Global Migration? What Happens Along the Way?
While it’s not entirely clear why some humans migrated out of Africa, and many remained, it’s likely that changes in climate and access to food pushed some people out.
According to an article in Nature: “The human dispersal out of Africa that populated the world was probably paced by climate changes.”
An article in National Geographic states: “Most likely, a change in climate helped to push them out. Experts suggest that droughts in Africa led to starvation, and humans were driven to near extinction before they ever had a chance to explore the world. A climate shift and greening in the Middle East probably helped to draw the first humans out of Africa.”
New scientific evidence also suggests that one of these bands of humans to migrate out of Africa lingered in a “hub” located in the Middle East, or the “Persian Plateau,” for thousands of years. Based on the work of anthropologist Michael Petraglia and others, Reuters reports: “[This group] lived in small, mobile bands of hunter-gatherers… The hub location offered a variety of ecological settings, from forests to grasslands and savannahs, fluctuating over time between arid and wet intervals. There would have been ample resources available, with evidence showing the hunting of wild gazelle, sheep and goat… The people inhabiting the hub at the time apparently had dark skin and dark hair, perhaps resembling the Gumuz or Anuak people now living in parts of East Africa.”
Traveling in groups, of likely around 100-150 people, and covering anywhere between hundreds or thousands of miles in a single human lifetime, it would take numerous generations for the human body to physically adapt to new environments.
For example, for those who would eventually migrate to regions of Europe, it’s estimated that it took thousands of years for skin to gradually produce less melanin, which was an adaptation to survive a region with less UV radiation, or reduced exposure to a strong sun. As humans migrated across the world, changes in phenotypic, superficial features would likely follow.
What stayed with us, however, was our creativity and ingenuity, for that is a universal experience. As people migrated across the globe, art was created and carried with them — such as these examples of Rock Art found in Australia, that date back to 30-50,00 years ago, or the hand stencils found in Argentina’s Cueva de las Manos, or “Cave of the Hands,” which were made tens of thousands of years later, in another continent separated by vast ocean.
Migration is a Human Experience
As a result of a massive global diaspora — tens of thousands of years in the making — human beings now live on all of the Earth’s continents (if we count the research stations in Antarctica).
While not all humans migrated at the same time, or moved into the same regions, they existed on a planet that created “push” or “pull” factors that often encouraged migration, or made it necessary.
Today, we are living in a similar world, where changes in climate, access to food, and other challenges, and opportunities spur migration. Though we are often taught to see this story through a more politicized lens of “immigration” — where some people are deemed “legal” and others “illegal” — our global diaspora reveals that migration has always been with us. In fact, it’s likely to accelerate. An international think tank has estimated that by the year 2050, there could be “1.2 billion climate refugees” across the world.
Which borders will be open to us? Which ones will be closed?
Inspired by the epic story of our global diaspora, journalist Paul Salopek embarked on a multi-year journey to retrace the path of our shared ancestors.
His journey is described in National Geographic: “The Out of Eden Walk will take Salopek at least 10 years and 33,796 kilometers (21,000 miles). He will cross five continents and more than 30 countries. Along the way, he will encounter many different languages, ethnicities, and cultures. He will hear stories from thousands of people. But everyone he talks to, from the nomadic Afar herders in Ethiopia, the refugees in Turkey, and the policeman in Pakistan, all have something in common. They share some of the same ancestors. Salopek walks the route some early humans took as they migrated out of Africa. And every person he meets along the way can trace their own ancestral path back there.”
If we go back far enough, many of us have a migration story. And all of us, if we go back hundreds of thousands of years, also share the same origin.
Next week, we’ll examine the history of immigration in the United States, asking one of the most essential questions of our time: Who gets to belong?
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