Talk:Human migration

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.

(bs) I'm inclined to think that this one is beyond redemption. That old 119th Century view is just too pervasive and too full of errors. Wipe it, delete and start again is probably the wisest thing. Tannin 11:06, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree. The whole concept is simply completely dated in parts and would merit a in-depth discussion. --Yak 15:00, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the objections others have cited about this article. But is this article even necessary. There are already separate articles (also in need of major revision, but not nearly as bad) on early human migration and historic human migration. This article might be better as a disambiguation stub linking to the other two articles, as well as to related issues like nomads, immigration, etc. It's frightening just how long ago the complaints about this page have been here without any resolution. Ftjrwrites (talk) 17:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

the main problem of this artical as i see it is that it is basicaly historical information, and has nothing on mordern migration. What i think it needs is:

  • Definition
  • Causes of migration

Volintory migrtation Forced migration - War, Natural disarsters, ect.

    • "Push Factors"
    • "Pull Factors"
  • Diffrent types of migration
    • Daily
    • Serasional
    • Perlimenrt
    • Local
    • Reginal
      • Rural to Urban
    • International

(not a compleat list of issues to be addressed, and not that wel orderd ATM)

then a bit about historical migrations. tooto 14:18, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree that this needs a redesign. I think the main problem is that the article mixes up a whole bunch of different things:

  1. Large numbers of people moving to a new location and settling there (that's what I would call migration), example: 17th-20th century Europeans migrating to America.
  2. Language spread. Linguists are now pretty clear that language spread does not require a migration in sense 1. Nobody knows if any Proto-Indo-Europeans ever migrated anywhere; it's very well possible that their language "migrated" (was adopted by their neighbors and thus spread) without any humans ever moving very far.
  3. Military conquest. That's what many of the "Great Migrations" around AD 500 probably were, according to many modern historians. I.e., the actual number of people moving was rather small, they just were quite belligerent and good at plundering. ;) Otherwise it gets difficult to explain how many of these nations so quickly disappeared after their military fortune changed.

Chl 23:43, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Great Migrations around 500, perhaps, but not all of those up to 650s or 900s... --Joy [shallot] 17:59, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Duplicate paragraphs

I noticed that some paragraphs were repeated in the article. Is this standard in Wikipedia for articles derived from the Britannia Encyclopedia of 1911, or was this a mistake? Rickyrab 18:01, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Um, you introduced them yourself, see the page history. It's possible that two concurrent submits (too many clicks?) caused the server to duplicate them. I'm cleaning it up now... --Joy [shallot] 19:50, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] This page has problems

One of them is the contention that "other migrations generally didn't give rise to new states" - it treats cenutries of history of Moorish Spain as a mere annoyance in the politics of Christian Europe.

Another is the short paragraph that deals with the Great migration that brought down the Roman Empire and produced the Europe we know today. Great migration is a dissambig which sends users to this paragraph, and the only link one can provide is Völkerwanderung, but that's not much of an article either. I think we should move Great migration to Great migration (dissambiguation) and write an extensive article at Great migration. That would be a slightly euro-centric usage, but it was one of the largest migrations ever and even the dissambig suggests that this is the primary meaning of the expression. Zocky 17:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh? Human migration is a general phenomenon. The Migration period, that I guess covers the same as the Great migration, was a specific phenomenon that well merits its own article. It seems to me, given that I now really do understand your intentions, that what would be best to do, is to move Völkerwanderung to either Great migration or Migration period, and then, of course, to redirect from the other, and, of course, improve the article. --Ruhrjung 18:07, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Who's best at navigation

...the Polynesians, starting with the Lapita culture, have proven to be the most successful in the art of navigation, as the Norse adventurers in the North Atlantic and the Arab traders in the Indian Ocean did not create permanent settlements.

I hope no one is forgetting Iceland (Norse), Zanzibar (Arab), Dar es Salaam (Arab) and other permanent settlements, not to mention the spread of Islam across the Indian Ocean rim! Who was most successful in navigating is kind of subjective anyway, hence my edit. --147.109.250.24 01:38, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would also question equating skilled navigation with creating settlements; the link seems tenuous. I would suggest removing the 'claim' the Polynesians (who were certainly great navigators) have been proven to be the most successful navigators. --SteveP 07:19, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] does out-migration mean merely emigration?

is it just british english that has out-migration including migration within one's country of origin (from rural Maine to the NYC, say)? doesn t american english make the same distinction? appealing for views on this. thanx -mayumashu

In educated British English, as in American English at similar cultural levels, we have the word "emigration" in which the "e-" is a variant of "ex-" meaning "out". The converse is "immigration". What, one wonders, is the kind of migration that is not "out"-migration. See tautology. --Wetman 21:43, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Every migration is out of a certain locality. However, this is depending on the context of the locality. When discussing emigration of people from rural into urban areas of one country you are simply focusing on migration. If you are discussing just people leaving rural areas and the reasons for it, you might want to emphasize the emigration. Or in another example, if you want to compare immigration and emigration numbers for a particular place, then the immigration for that place is not emigration for that same place.Viewviewer 20:20, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mass migration?

Hi, I agree with other that this page has errors. One in particular - that human migration necessarily refers to the movement en masse, as opposed to individual migration. I think this particular definition may be for one area of study/practice, but not for all - Guppy 16:40, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The first line of the article reads "Human migration denotes any movement of groups of people from one locality to another." --Wetman 21:43, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Humans migrations during ice age

this was picked out from the reference desk. Anyone would like to add that to the article?


this

with this

equals:

Image:Human-migration-temperature.jpg

While I was doing a map for the migrations of the human race I decided to cross it with some information from the ice age article. And for my surprise the result is that the human migrations were mainly during the colder periods of the ice age. The Bering Strait crossing coincided with a real cold period. Why is that? Is the data wrong, or is there a conclusion to be taken that i didn´t understand?--Alexandre Van de Sande 18:53, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

When the earth is colder more water is locked up as solid ice, so there is less in the sea and ocean. The lower sea level joins place that are now separated by open water. People walked the Bering Staight (or perhaps the Aleutians) because there was land there. Similarly the english channel was dry enough to walk (even farm, probably), but the rising sea levels swamped this. Places on either side (notably Norfolk and the Netherlands) are barely above water now. Also some places (e.g. the mainland of Britain) were partially covered with ice. The weight of the icesheet bearing down on Scotland lifted southern England up (like a seesaw). Now that the ice sheet is gone England is sinking and Scotland rising (this is post-glacial rebound). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:01, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
I suppose as to why the coldest part of the ice age (I'm guessing here): given a couple of particularly bad winters might make a nomadic tribe move further than normal, hoping to find greener pastures (and conversely, if the weather's not too bad, there's no point in moving from your cushy home). And humans (partularly humans with basic technology like fur clothing and flint tools) are generalists, able to take advantage of environmental changes, which may drive away dangerous or competing specialists like wolves. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:16, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

excellent map! since you ask about the letters, they are markers for individual mutations, i.e. you can trace the migrations by watching how the letters move along the arrows. for example, the B mutation occurs apparently in East Asia and travels across the Pacific and North America to South America. I think the letters are used universally, i.e. the "A" "B" "C" alleles etc. are technical terms agreed upon by geneticists, so I decided to include them in Image:Human mtDNA migration.png.

As for the temperature, I doubt there is a direct causation, at least for the first 'gap': people were still in Africa, and I don't see how a warm period would have kept them from emigrating. It just so happens that they didn't emigrate for another 60ka or so. Further phyla that were formed within Africa between 130k BP and 70k BP are probably just not shown in the diagram because they don't correspond to large movements. dab (ᛏ) 19:45, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I figured out that it was something like that. But without a further explanation the letters are only usefull to help you guide in a otherwise confusing map of lines. I believe the new map is better organized so this won´t be necessary - on the contrary they only add noise to the map (i tested). If we can figure out which lineage each letter refers to, so as to help someone inters]ested gather more information about each lineage (Aborigine, Asiatic, Indo-european etc) then the letters would be interesting. My theory is never add anything that cannot be univerally understood, suposing that some geneticist will understand... By the way if someone would be nice enough to manage a high resolution dymaxion map we could have a yet higher resolution version of this guy...--Alexandre Van de Sande 20:51, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Oh they are called Haplogroups. I just found out in this great online encyclopedia I know. There is something about that in Supercluster (genetic). Can somebody link the letter in to the actual names?--Alexandre Van de Sande 21:06, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
I agree that the map looks better without the letters. It's just that if the human migration article is to discuss these haplogroups, it would be useful to have them in there, and I do hope that at some point the article will give that amount of detail. dab (ᛏ) 08:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
This info is great! Can it end up in an article, instead of archives from here? AlMac 07:28, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Human migration involves a bit more than European migration (the author rather naively assumes that language migration presupposes population migration)...this section needs serious work and hasn't taken the conscientious advice of earlier critiques. Remove this article, less the blind lead the more blind. 13 Nov 2005 user: Kemet

Kya? I finally figured out that Kya was one thousand years ago, but it would help if there was a notation for this.

[edit] NPOV

I recently noticed Single-origin hypothesis and Multiregional hypothesis. If the latter is taken seriously, it should be mentioned in the section on the earliest migrations. -- Beland 13:41, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

For more then 3 months no one did anything about that. Also, modern genetics tells us that multiregional hypothesis is not so relevant anymore. So, I removed sectPOV. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 01:30, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is seasonal migration noteworthy?

see the Chunyun article.--Skyfiler 01:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Seasonal migration, called Transhumance is certainly noteworthy. A brief account with a Main article: Transhumance heading would be the way. --Wetman 12:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


The article needs more things from the asian and african sides of thing... Quid of the Bantou migrations, or the many peoples from the central asia?

[edit] Early modern, 19c and 20c

I re-wrote the early modern section. This page also badly needs a section on 19th and 20th c migrations. It also needs much more on non-European migration. Jdorney 12:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Austronesian Expansion

Anybody have any information about the Austronesian expansion? It should be in this article for many reasons:

A) They colonized of the Maritime Southeast Asia, largely displacing the indigenous inhabitants(the Australoid peoples) of that region. They were also settling lands over relatively longer distances before the more notable Europeans did.

B) Their descendants, the Polynesians settled most of the western Pacific Islands.

C) Their range was between Madagascar and Hawaii(if you count the Polynesians), a span that transverse almost half of the planet.

D) The Austronesian language family is a candidate for being the largest, if not one of the largest, language family in the history of mankind.

E) They number at least 300 Million, as opposed to the Bantus which number significantly less.

I see an entry for Polynesians but not for Austronesians as a whole. I know research and info about the topic is limited and it's the primary reason I am taking this to the talk pages instead. Any input would be appreciated.--Chicbicyclist 10:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Migration in the European Union, Short distance migration - these two paragrapsh are in desperate need of improvment, both factual and language. Nim 13:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)Nimrod88

[edit] Map request

 It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality.

A map for the last few millennia or centuries would be helpful. -- Beland 04:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)