Human migration

Human migration denotes any movement by humans from one locality to another (migration), often over long distances or in large groups. Humans are known to have extensively migrated throughout history. This can be compared with the periodic migratory behaviour of groups of animals such as some birds and fishes. This article concentrates on the historical human migrations.

The people who migrate are called migrants, or, more specifically, emigrants, immigrants or settlers, depending on historical setting, circumstance and perspective.

Migration and population isolation is one of the four evolutionary forces (along with natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation). The study of the distribution of and change in allele (gene variations) frequencies under such influences is the discipline of Population genetics.

The movement of populations in modern times has continued under the form of both voluntary migration within one's region, country, or beyond, and involuntary migration (which includes slave trade, Trafficking in human beings and ethnic cleansing).

Overview

Different types of migration include:

Daily human commuting can be compared to the diurnal migration of organisms in the oceans.
Seasonal human migration is mainly related to agriculture.
Permanent migration, for the purposes of permanent or long-term stays.
Local
Regional
Rural to Urban, more common in developing countries as industrialisation takes effect
Urban to Rural, more common in developed countries due to a higher cost of urban living
International

Human migration has taken place at all times and in the greatest variety of circumstances. It has been tribal, national, class and individual. Its causes have been climatic, political, economic, religious, or mere love of adventure. Its causes and results are fundamental for the study of ethnology, of political and social history, and of political economy.

The pressures of human migrations, whether as outright conquest or by slow cultural infiltration and resettlement, have affected the grand epochs in history (e.g. the fall of the Western Roman Empire); under the form of colonization, migration has transformed the world (e.g. the prehistoric and historic settlements of Australia and the Americas). Population genetics studied in traditionally settled modern populations have opened a window into the historical patterns of migrations, a technique pioneered by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

Forced migration (see population transfer) has been a means of social control under authoritarian regimes, yet under free initiative migration is a powerful factor in social adjustment (e.g. the growth of urban populations).

In December 2003 The Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) was launched with the support of Kofi Annan and several countries, with an independent 19-member Commission, threefold mandate and a finite life-span, ending December 2005. Its report, based on regional consultation meetings with stakeholders and scientific reports from leading international migration experts, was published and presented to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 5 October 2005. The 90-page Report, along with supporting evidence, is available on the GCIM website ^*

Historical migrations

Early Migrations

Evolution of the genus Homo took place in Africa (see Recent single-origin hypothesis). First Homo erectus migrated out of Africa across Eurasia, beginning about one million years ago, no doubt using some of the same available land routes north of the Himalayas that were later to become the Silk Road, and across the Strait of Gibraltar. Bruce Bower controversially suggested that Homo erectus may have built rafts and sailed oceans. ^*

The expansion of Homo erectus was followed by that of Homo sapiens. The matrilinear most recent common ancestor shared by all living human beings, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve, probably lived roughly 150-120 kya, the time of Homo sapiens idaltu, probably in the area of modern Ethiopia, Kenya or Tanzania. Around 100-80 kya, three main lines of Homo sapiens sapiens diverged, bearers of mitochondrial haplogroup L1 (mtDNA) / A (Y-DNA) colonizing Southern Africa (the ancestors of the Khoisan (Capoid) peoples), bearers of haplogroup L2 (mtDNA) / B (Y-DNA) settling Central and West Africa (the ancestors of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speaking peoples and of the Mbuti pygmies), while the bearers of haplogroup L3 remained in East Africa. Some 70 kya, a part of the L3 bearers migrated into the Near East, spreading east to southern Asia and Australasia some 60 kya, northwestwards into Europe and eastwards into Central Asia some 40 kya, and further east to the Americas from ca. 30 kya.

Migrations to the New World

There are two main models for the history of the first settlement of the Americas. One school of thought believes in a "short chronology," believing that the first movement into the New World occurred no earlier than 14,000 – 16,000 years ago. On the other hand, the "long chronology" camp posits that people entered the hemisphere at a much earlier date, theorizing the possibility of migration 20,000 years ago or earlier.

Neolithic Revolution

Agriculture is believed to have first been practiced some 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (see Jericho). From there it propagated as a "wave" across Europe, a view supported by Archaeogenetics, reaching northern Europe some 5,000 years ago.

Pacific

The islands of the Pacific were the last region on Earth to be populated by humans, as recently as 15 to 12 millennia ago.

With the art of open-sea navigation involving the most confident and courageous use of the available technologies of boat-building, combined with the most sophisticated understanding of currents and prevailing winds, the Polynesians, starting with the Lapita culture, have proven to be the most successful in the art of navigation, if the permanent spread of culture is taken into account, for the Norse adventurers in the North Atlantic and the Arab traders in the Indian Ocean did not create permanent settlements. The Lapita people, who got their name from the archaeological site in Lapita, New Caledonia, where their characteristic pottery was first discovered, came from Austronesia, probably New Guinea. Their navigation skills took them to the Solomon Islands, around 1600 BC, and later to Fiji and Tonga. By the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, most of Polynesia was a loose web of thriving cultures who settled on the islands' coasts and lived off the sea. By 500 BC Micronesia was completely colonized; the last region of Polynesia to be reached was New Zealand in around AD 1000.

Polynesian migration patterns also have been studied by linguistic analysis, and recently by analyzing characteristic genetic alleles of today's inhabitants. Both methods resulted in supporting the original archaeological findings.

Eurasian

Indo-Europeans

See Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The Indo-European migration had variously been dated to the end of the Neolithic (Marija Gimbutas: Corded ware, Yamna, Kurgan), the early Neolithic (Colin Renfrew: Starčevo-Körös, Linearbandkeramic) and the late Palaeolithic (Marcel Otte, Paleolithic Continuity Theory).

The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language are usually believed to have originated to the North of the Black Sea (today Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia), and from there they gradually migrated into, and spread their language by cultural diffusion to, Anatolia, Europe, and Central Asia and South Asia starting from around the end of the Neolithic period (see Kurgan hypothesis). Other theories, such as that of Colin Renfrew, posit their development much earlier, in Anatolia, and claim that Indo-European languages and culture spread as a result of the agricultural revolution in the early Neolithic. This view is disputed by linguistics evidence, however, such as the reconstruction of terminology relating to bronze working in Proto-Indo-European; which suggests that the language did not diverge until such technology was available.

Relatively little is known about the inhabitants of pre-Indo-European "Old Europe". They are believed to have been hunter-gathers. The Basque language remains from that era, as do the indigenous languages of the Caucasus. The Sami are genetically distinct among the peoples of Europe, but the Sami languages, as part of the Finno-Ugric languages, spread into Europe about the same time as the Indo-European languages. However, since that period speakers of other Finno-Ugric languages such as the Finns and the Estonians have had more contact with other Europeans, thus today sharing more genes with them than the Sami.

Bronze Age

The earliest migrations we can reconstruct from historical sources are those of the 2nd millennium BC. The Proto-Indo-Iranians began their expansion from ca. 2000 BC, the Indo-Aryan migration reaching Assyria in the west and the Punjab in the east by ca. 1500 BC. In the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean and Anatolia were overrun by moving populations, summarized as the "Sea Peoples", leading to the collapse of the Hittite Empire and ushering in the Iron Age.

Early Iron Age

The Dorian invasion of Greece led to the Greek Dark Ages. Very Little is known about the period of the 12th to 9th centuries BC, but there were significant population movements throughout Anatolia and the Iranian plateau. Iranian peoples invaded the territory of modern Iran in this period, taking over the Elamite Empire. The Urartians were displaced by Armenians, and the Cimmerians and the Mushki migrated from the Caucasus into Anatolia. A Thraco-Cimmerian connection links these movements to the Proto-Celtic world of central Europe, leading to the introduction of Iron to Europe and the Celtic expansion to western Europe and the British Isles around 500 BC.

The Great Migrations

Western historians refer to the period of migrations that separated Antiquity from the Middle Ages in Europe as the Great Migrations or as the Migrations Period. This period is further divided into two phases.

The first phase, from 300 to 500 AD, saw the movement of Germanic and other tribes and ended with the settlement of these peoples in the areas of the former Western Roman Empire, essentially causing its demise. (See also: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Suebi, Alamanni Marcomanni).

The second phase, between 500 and 900 AD, saw Slavic, Turkic and other tribes on the move, re-settling in Eastern Europe and gradually making it predominantly Slavic. Moreover, more Germanic tribes migrated within Europe during this period, including the Lombards (to Italy), and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (to the British Isles). See also: Avars, Bulgars, Huns, Arabs, Vikings, Varangians. The last phase of the migrations saw the coming of the Hungarians to the Pannonian plain.

German historians of the 19th century referred to these Germanic migrations as the Völkerwanderung, the migrations of the peoples.

Medieval and Early Modern

Other migrations that happened later in the history of Europe generally did not give rise to new states, but disrupted and, to some extent, dominated policy within Europe. Examples are the invasion of the Arabs into Spain - only as late as 1492 the Spanish completed their Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula - or the settlement of Muslims in south-eastern Europe, as a result of European armies fighting back the Turks in the Balkan, and the unsuccessful attempt to reconquer Palestine during the Crusades, despite the enormous amount of people, pilgrims and huge armies that participated in them. (At the end of the Reconquista, the King and Queen of Spain also expelled the Jews from their country, thus triggering a migration to places such as Eastern Europe and the New World.)

At the end of the Middle Ages, the Roma arrived in Europe (to Iberia and the Balkans) from the Middle East, originating from the Indus river.

Since the 14th century, the Serbs started leaving the areas of their medieval Kingdom and Empire that was overrun by the Turks and migrated to the north, to the lands of today's Vojvodina (northern Serbia), which was ruled by the Kingdom of Hungary in that time. The two greatest migrations took place in 1690 and 1737.

European Colonialism from the 16th to the early 20th centuries led to an imposition of a European superstrate in many regions of the world, particularly in the Americas, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia, where European languages remain either prevalent or in frequent use as administrative languages.

World War II

See World War II evacuation and expulsion for World War II forced migrations.

The Jewish diaspora across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East formed from voluntary migrations, enslavement, threats of enslavement and pogroms. After the Nazis brought the Holocaust upon Jewish people in the 1940s, there was a vast migration to Palestine, which became home to the nation of Israel as a result.

Provisions of the Potsdam Agreement from 1945 signed by victorious Western Allies and the Soviet Union led to one of the largest European migrations, and definitely the largest in the 20th century. It involved the migration and resettlement of close to or over 20 million people. The largest affected group were 16.5 million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe westwards. The second largest group were Poles, millions of whom were expelled westwards from eastern Kresy region and resettled in the so-called Recovered Territories (see Allies decide Polish border in the article on the Oder-Neisse line). Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and some Bielorussians were in the meantime expelled eastwards, from Poland to the Soviet Union. Finally, many of the several hundred thousands Jews remaining in the Eastern Europe after the Holocaust migrated outside Europe to Israel.

Migrations and climate cycles

The modern field of climate history suggests that the successive waves of Eurasian nomadic movement throughout history have had their origins in climatic cycles, which have expanded or contracted pastureland in Central Asia, especially Mongolia and the Altai. People were displaced from their home ground by other tribes trying to find land that could be grazed by essential flocks, each group pushing the next further to the south and west, into the highlands of Anatolia, the plains of Hungary, into Mesopotamia or southwards, into the rich pastures of China.

Toward an understanding of migration

Types of Migrations

The cyclic movement which involves commuting, a seasonal movement, and nomadism.
The periodic movement which consists of migrant labor, military services, and pastoral farming Transhumance.
The migratory movement that moves from the eastern part of the United States to the western part. It also moves from China to southeast Asia, from Europe to North America, and from South America to the middle part of the Americas.
Internal migration

Ravenstein's 'laws of migration'

Certain laws of social science have been proposed to describe human migration. The following was a standard list after Ravenstein's proposals during the time frame of 1834 to 1913. The laws are as follows:

Most migrants only go a short distance at one time.
Long distance migrations are for those who come from large cities.
Most migration is from rural areas to urban areas.
Most international migrants consist of young males between the ages of 20 and 45.
Most migrations proceed in step-by-step processes.
Each migration flow produces at least one counterflow.
Females remain more migratory than the males within their country.
Migration increases in volume as industries develop and transportation improves.
The economy is a major factor in migration.

Other Migration models

Zipf's Inverse distance law (1946)
Gravity model and the Friction of distance
Buffer Theory
Stouffer's Theory of intervening opportunities (1940)
Lee's Push-pull theory (1966)

Causes of Migrations

Push Factors which are economic, political, cultural, and environmentally based.
Pull Factors which are economic, political, cultural, and environmentally based.
Barriers/Obstacles which is an example of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s.

Literature

Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact. World Migrations in the Second Millennium, Duke University Press 2002

External links

Metropolitan Museum page on Lapita culture
An mtDNA view of the peopling of the world by Homo sapiens
National Geographic: Atlas of the Human Journey (Haplogroup-based human migration maps)
Journey of Mankind : the Peopling of the World
Stalker's Guide to International Migration
Diplomacy Monitor - Migration

References

Erectus Ahoy

Human migration | Population | Genetic genealogy

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