The following is based mainly on andaman.org. Much of it is guesswork based on what little we know:
100,000 years ago:
The north is covered in ice (the grey regions in the maps below).
There are three species of man:
- Home erectus in Africa and Eurasia
- Neanderthals in West Eurasia
- Homo sapiens in eastern Africa
It was then that two great migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa began:
1. The Southern Migration: Over the next 70,000 years it will settle southern Eurasia, Australia, Melanesia and maybe even South America.
2. The Northern Migration: Over the next 90,000 years it will settle northern Eurasia, North Africa and the Americas. At first it heads for Central Eurasia following the big game, but splits into a western and eastern half before it gets there.
95,000 years ago:
90,000 years ago:
85,000 years ago:
80,000 years ago:
The Northern Migration reaches Central Eurasia.
75,000 years ago:
The Toba catastrophe: the biggest volcanic explosion of the past 28 million years takes place in Sumatra. Six years of volcanic winter follow:
- Home erectus is wiped out.
- Neanderthals live.
- Homo sapiens are almost wiped out: no more than 10,000 breeding pairs live.
70,000 years ago:
65,000 years ago:
60,000 years ago:
The Northern Migration reaches Siberia.
55,000 years ago:
50,000 years ago:
The Southern Migration reaches Australia, possibly South America.
45,000 years ago:
40,000 years ago:
35,000 years ago:
30,000 years ago:
25,000 years ago:
In the south of Spain the last Neanderthal dies.
20,000 years ago:
15,000 years ago:
The ice age comes to an end. As the ice melts and the big game dies out:
- The western branch of the Northern Migration spreads into Europe, the Middle East and North Africa,
- The eastern branch spreads into East Asia and the Americas.
10,000 years ago:
5,000 years ago:
The Austronesian Migration: people from the Southern Migration who settled Taiwan burst forth and in the course of the next 4,000 years settle:
- South East Asia,
- southern China,
- Madagascar,
- Micronesia,
- Polynesia, Hawaii and New Zealand
They almost completely wipe out the Negritos of South East Asia.
The Bantu Migration: Little has been said about Africa so far because little is known. But we do know that 5,000 years ago Africa was split three ways:
- Europids in the north. They are the western branch of the Northern Migration.
- Negrids (Congoids) in the west. They are the black people you find there today. They come from the:
- Khoisanids in the south and east. There are still some left: the Khoisan in South Africa and the Hadza and Sandawe in Tanzania. They are the closest genetically to the first Homo sapiens. Compared to Negrids their lips are thinner, their skin is more of a copper colour and their eyes have an epicanthic fold like the Chinese.
The Bantus are Negrids. They take over most of the south and east of Africa starting about 3,000 years ago.
500 years ago:
The European Migration begins. They spread to the Americas, Australia, southern Africa and New Zealand, wiping out many of the people there. They bring millions of blacks from Africa to work as slaves in the Americas, particularly in the tropics: the African Diaspora.
See also:
I suppose one day, folks we’ll be discussing the migration that shaped what is currently known as “the Western World”.
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Abagond,
Speaking of migrations, and yes this is slightly off topic.
A short whiles back, I did a search on your blog for “the Great Migration” I did not find anything.
I learned about this in Divinity School from a Korean prof. What got to me was that I was never taught this in High School, nor in University. How could I take a whole year of US history and not hear so much as a small mumble about this.
Perhaps you will consider blogging on this. I like to hear your take on issues.
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That’s a great site. I’ve read through it years ago. We’ve discovered a lot since then, with the main revelations being the the evidence of Neanderthal introgression into Eurasians and the Denisovan introgression into Melanesians. The second discovery did not look at Australian aborigines, but it’s assumed that they too have Denisovan admixture since they’re related to Melanesians. This explains why Australoids are so much more robust than negritos, even though they descend from them.
There’s also some genetic evidence that western Africans (congoids) also have some admixture from an unknown archaic human group – as high as 13 percent in some populations. This may explain the rise of the Bantu, who went on to develop an iron age culture and dominated the Khoisan people, who still had stone aged culture for the most part.
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This is interesting stuff but I have some serious doubts on these routes and time tables. Anyone who has done some serious hiking knows that human on foot can travel huge distances in relatively short time.
Pawnees from Kansas used to go on war path to Mexico on foot. Eastern tribes used to travel huge distances also on foot.
I did a hiking holiday on foot when I was only 16 with my friend. My backpack was 27 kilos and my friend had a bit heavier. We, two teenagers form the city, walked with a map and a compassa on average 15-20 kms a day in Lapland wilderness. If you live like that and are used to that, and have less weight on you, you walk easily 20-25 kms a day. In ten days that is 200 kms. In plus three months it is 2000 kms etc.
On canoos or boats it is even easier. It takes few hours to row across the Gilf of Finland. Four fit rowers can row a good rowing boat, civilian model not a competition one, 60 kms a day.
On skiis it is also very easy. Oldest skis are few thousand years old. These are the oldest which have been found but we can assume that the invention is even older.
So my take on this is this: humans did travel and migrate far more faster and actively than most scientists assume. For some reason it is assumed that they did not have any sea going vessels, could not swim at all, walked on very lazy pace and did not have a clue what they were doing. I belive this is wrong.
Our ancestors were smart, tuff people, who survived in conditions which one day will finish us off. Perhaps…
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@sam
Sure, a human could walk a lot faster than these migrations occurred, but that doesn’t mean that they would have been compelled to do so. Once a band found a new uninhabited (by hominids) area lush with edible plants and easily hunted animals, what reason would they have had to go farther? We know what lies beyond the horizon, our ancestors didn’t. They wouldn’t have just kept roaming onwards after they found a suitable habitat for themselves.
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@fenric: ok, partially I agree, but never underestimate the human nature of exploring. I mean, if we would just think that it is best to stick around when we have food and shelter, who would ever leave home??
Well, some still don’t and live with momma and papa, but majority of us wants to get out. Also, it only takes few guys to take a look beyond them hills in the horizon, and if they come back with some stories, some others will go after. Just think about Columbus.
Also we do not know how nomadic these populations were. I bet some of them just kept on going, while some moved back and forth, while others stayed more put.
The reason I stated my belief is this: very often, and I do not know why, we think that the acient people lived in isolation and very static existence. You read some history and some some reseacher tells you that people in Buckbury never went to Duckbury six miles down to road. How come? Because they did not move there according to the church books? Well, I have resided in Finland all my life but I have been almost litterally around the world, even living some years abroad.
Some big river stopped the migration for centuries? Yeah, maybe because of the fish and stuff, but not as an physical obstacle. Some reasearchers look mountains and think “I can’t do that” and conclude that nobody can. And yet, remember Hannibal and his elephants crossing the Alps. I mean, even today it would be a friggin mircale to get some african elephants to go across the Alps outside the roads that is.
But anyways, these speculations make history so interesting.
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@ sam:
The thing is, most ancient peoples weren’t making migrations in the way that we think of migration today. In most cases it would have been a gradual spread, caused by the need for food and also due to population growth. Although populations were so low then that it was not a strong factor compared with later times.
Some population movements were more rapid, however. It is thought that the initial southern migration was much faster than the other ones. This is because it was largely coastal, and thus the environment didn’t change much. By contrast, a migration inland might go through plains, forests and deserts, which present numerous obstacles. A beach existence provides a steady source of familiar food sources.
Of course, some people set out for new territories but then didn’t survive all that long. It was a far harsher existence back then. So some places were explored, and then re-explored later. An example is Britain; it is thought that it was settled several times by modern humans who then left or died out with the fluctuations of the ice age. So when the ice receded, new settlers moved into virgin territory.
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@eurasian: Yeah, I agree. Migrations in the past were all kinds. Some faster, others slow, some incidental or accidental, some done purposely.
One thing though, we do not know every move those people did nor we do know where and how long some people lived. Purely nomadic cultures do not leave that much archeological remains to be found. Also if artefacts are manufactured from wood and such, almost nothing will remain. We see it in finnish history.
The old idea was that there were no buildings on grand scale here in the past. So called castle hills were thoughed to be simple hiding places. Now we know that some of them had three sets of wooden walls, some had steady habitation, well, wooden halls etc. One of them even had walls more than a mile build in a similar way as in the Byzanthium.
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Yes, I’ve been reading about stuff like this for a long time.
Not all the lines and whatnot shown on the charts are really known, while some other things not shown are now.
But yeah this is pretty much the big picture.
The bit about Aus. Aborigines reaching the southern tip of S. America is not believed or supported by much evidence at all.
There’s some speculation about it because of some similaries of appearance in the case of Tierra del Fuegans at the southern tip of S. America, who are all extinct now but were around in small numbers in Darwins day. A very primitive HG people.
There’s no evidence at all for them having migrated far north in S. America as is shown, that I know of.
The journey from Australia to S.America back then by Aborigines is very had to believe. The trade winds go in the wrong direction, east to west. You have to get down to the “roaring 40s” latitudes and high 40s at that for winds that go west to east — bringing often enormous seas. Highly highly perilous even for modern high technology large sailboats today. I just don’t believe it.
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This is how the six major geographic races came about in fact.
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These maps and much of the information from the site that Abagond got them from were done up primarily using DNA analysis of population groups and times of splitting apart that Luigi Cavalli-Sforza pioneered, which proteges and followers have taken forward from there.
Some other DNA analysis techniques using phenotypically active areas of the genome are being used more recently as well.
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While it is certainly possible that Australoid-type people were early settlers of South America, it is highly unlikely that they sailed across the Pacific to do so. More likely, they would have taken a coastal route via Northeast Asia. We know that there are Negritos as far North as the Philippines; and many studies appear to link the Ainu (indigenous people of Japan) with an Australoid origin.
As I said in an earlier comment, migration along coastal routes is relatively quick and easy because the food sources and environmental factors stay much the same. It is unlikely that people of that time had the sailing capacity to cross the entire South Pacific, but may have had primitive boats sufficient to negotiate the Bering Strait.
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National Geographic’s “The Human Family Tree” explains this is pretty great detail as well, if anyone is interested in having it broken down even more. It shows where the ice was and how even a small boat could have navigated out to Australia if so much ice had acted as a land mass to walk across.
As Eurasian Sensation has said, it wasn’t a migration in the modern sense. It sometimes (during times when their lives were not being threatened so much to make them move more quickly) was as simple as a family has children who grow up and move into homes a little further down the coast, and their children do the same, and so forth. The population extends exploration a little further beyond where it lives, and it keeps the migration going even when there is no imminent danger to force it.
The film even tries to take a stab at why our features changed, and what flatter noses or epicanthic eye folds would have protected us from during those days.
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The recent discovery of human teeth in Israel could be an indicator that human migration started much earlier. The remains are claimed to be about 400,000 years old. How did they get to Israel?
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@femi: It is just my hunch but I believe that movements of humans have been much wider, faster and confused than general consensus suggest today. I remember once talkin to this guy in Kenia, forgot if he was masai or turkana, but he told me how they visited Nairobi when he was a kid. They walked 150 kms! It took copule days but that is how they went and came.
Also I think that we try to simplefye these early humans, try to figure out their behavior with some really simple basic things such as food etc. Look at todays mountaineers. They do not need to climb to Mt Everest of Kilimanjaro. They do it, like the classic answer by one of them says, “because it is there”. Why not the early humans? What was stopping them?
We always assyme that their only motivation was food and shelter, something like that, and I don´t believe that. I think they were much closer to us than we would like to admit. Computers, the Net, jetplanes, tv, other stuff makes us think we are more advanced or civilized than they were, but we forget how we sometimes behave. Not rationally at all. War is prime example of that. It is insane and yet we do it more horribly than ever.
Look at our firefighters every day! They risk their lives for total strangers. That shows you what we humans are all about. We can do things which risk our very own lives if we think they are worth it. I think our acient forefathers did so too.
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Femi said:
They recently found a modern human jaw in China that is 110,000 years old, too.
There’s been questions as to whether those teeth are actually modern homo sapiens. We know there was an archaic group of humans in Israel, the Skhul-Qafzeh hominids at least 110,000 years ago as well. The Skhul-Qafzeh were very close to modern humans anatomically.
They also recently found a modern human jaw in China that is 110,000 years old.
I think the story of human prehistory is much more complex than we currently or ever will understand.
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@ sam
It seems plausible that the migrations could have happened on a much shorter time scale, as (at least modern) humans do seem to be curious without any perceptible direct purpose. The quest for the unknown as an instinct? We share that trait with other animals, notably cats who are also able to cross enormous distances in a short time.
I have a very rudimentary understanding of archaeology. We can probably only go by the evidence that has been found so far. I suppose, the older the remains, the less they reveal themselves. I don’t know.
@ Sagat
I think if the findings are not from homo sapiens that would be even more remarkable. It would raise the question, what made them move and not get extinct on the spot?
It certainly is complex as nothing forbids migrations backwards or in all possible directions. Those maps are fairly unidirectional, away from Africa, mostly towards East and North.
I think the desire to return to where you came from at some point is also a human trait. The question is how modern that desire is.
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Femi said
Well, the model that Abagond posted is based on the fact that human groups outside Africa have subsets of the genetic diversity found in Africa. One hypothesis for Africa’s high level of genetic diversity is that humans actually did come back into Africa and contributed to the African gene pool.
As I said earlier, there is some genetic evidence that Africans are mixed with another divergent human population. Some have postulated this group to be the Skhul-Qafzeh hominids, who suddenly disappeared from existence in Israel. Maybe, as you said, they simply went back home.
With the proof that Neanderthals and Denisovans have mixed with modern humans, I think that scenario is now more probable.
On a similar note, check out this study that found a gene that is 2 million years old in Chinese populations that roots in east Asia.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15483323
I think humans are most likely a mosaic of various hominid groups that split off from one another and recombined at various points in time.
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I always wonder about the black people of the pacific such as papua new guinea, solomon islands I know they are related to the original australians but how did they get there if all life started in africa? Everyone seems to forget that black people inhabit a lot of these small islands.
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Just found and read an old book of mine:
Out of Eden – The Peopling of the World (Robinson 2004, London) by Stephen Oppenheimer.
Recommend it even though I do not agree on everything the guy writes. Pretty interesting stuff. Go get it. 😀
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[…] human migrations & race realism Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
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[…] Covers:* Home erectus in Africa and Eurasia* Neanderthals in West Eurasia* Homo sapiens in eastern Africa* The Toba catastrophe* Europids * Negrids * Khoisanids – and epicanthic fold […]
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[…] Covers:* Home erectus in Africa and Eurasia* Neanderthals in West Eurasia* Homo sapiens in eastern Africa* The Toba catastrophe* Europids * Negrids * Khoisanids – and epicanthic fold […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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[…] Covers:* Home erectus in Africa and Eurasia* Neanderthals in West Eurasia* Homo sapiens in eastern Africa* The Toba catastrophe* Europids * Negrids * Khoisanids – and epicanthic fold […]
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[…] Covers:* Home erectus in Africa and Eurasia* Neanderthals in West Eurasia* Homo sapiens in eastern Africa* The Toba catastrophe* Europids * Negrids * Khoisanids – and epicanthic fold […]
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Reblogged this on Abiola of the Rouge.
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If you follow the Bradshaw Foundation which went around the world finding out all the main Haplogroups of the world, you will find that we are all related and words like Congoids do not exist. People from Africa were human and had been fully human for 120,000 years. As they passed through different climates from sandy hot deserts which at the time very cold and arid-( no water) there was no way they could get across the Levant to India, where all the main initial roots of humanity from Africa still are. They went from India to the rest of the world, in a second venture, from the Horn of Africa. The Female Haplogroup called Manju (L3), which still is in North Africa, and it’s consequent Haplogroups which are linked to one another through time; and change their looks as they move from one continent to the other, in fact go to India to Burma. From India to the Andaman Islands, and following their counterpart Cain (M130) who is also found in India and the Andaman Islands they travel along the Indonesian Continent and the Sunda Shelf (which like all the world had much more land than now because the sea was 300 to 400 foot lower due to the Ice Age). Then Cain and Manju groups split up. One of the Cain groups went North to Thailand which of course did not have a name at all then at all. The other group of Cain’s and Manju’s went South and had about 10 miles to cross to Australia from the Torres Straights in a dugout canoe. They could see the land they wanted to reach. The distance from England to France on it’s shortest route is 20 miles, and on a clear day one can see France from England; so the groups had half of the distance to cross in comparison. The oldest remains of humans in Australia are about 65,000 years old and there would be more when the sea is sucked up by another Ice Age, but that will not be for a very long time. Cain went up into East Asia and eventually crossed the sea near the Aleutian Islands to North West America. Another of his kind with groups of females crossed the Bering Straights which at that time was an enormous amount of land locked up in ice. The Ethnic Americans are pleased to hear where they came from. One of them learned that he was related to the Chukchi, who lived in the Arctic circle in the freezing snow, which was very exciting to him, as he knew how he had got to America.
The word “races” of man has a very recent invention and not related to any factual information. The differences in humans only began to show themselves about 30,000 years ago which is very recent, and they have diversified more ever since. As you can see from the above. people have spread out and change because of differences in climate from very cold to very hot to steamy jungles to freezing very tall mountains in the Himalayas to the mountains in Peru. The Denizovans might very well have given these people the ability to be able to breathe better in the high climates, because of the type of lungs they inherited, but that is still in question.
Cynthia McLaglen
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This is some interesting fiction and you are a good writer, but I thought you were a Christian. Why are you writing nonsense about 100 thousand years? The world has only existed for about 6 thousand years.
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@ Paul Kruger
Not according to the last scientific knowledge.
Where did you get the 6 thousand years?
I’m christian too but one must give credit to where it belongs. Afaik, science is the appropriate tool to understand where and how our species evolved in this planet (Subject to updates when necessary).
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wow a fundamentalist christian i think
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I got it from the Old Testament of the Bible
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that’s sad
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