Human Migration: Investigate the Global Journey of Humankind

By Judy Dodge Cummings and Tom Casteel

About 200,000 years ago, humans arose as a species on the continent of Africa. How did they get to the rest of the world? When did they leave, why, and what did they use for transportation? Whether by bamboo raft or Boeing 747, whether to escape political persecution or because of climate change, migration is a recurring pattern throughout the human history of the world.

In Human Migration: Investigate the Global Journey of Humankind, readers ages 12 to 15 retrace the paths taken by our ancestors, starting with the very first steps away from African soil. Understanding who has migrated, from where, when, and why helps us understand the shared history of humans across the world and the future that links us together.

Kids discover how archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, linguists, and geneticists piece together different parts of the puzzle of ancient migration. Open-ended, inquiry-based activities and links to primary sources help readers draw inferences and analyze how these human journeys have changed where and how people live. Human Migration takes readers on a journey from our common ancestry to our shared future on an increasingly fragile planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nomad Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781619303737

Judy Dodge Cummings

Judy Dodge Cummings has written more than 20 books for children and teenagers. One of her books, Earth, Wind, Fire, and Rain: Real Tales of Temperamental Elements, highlights the true story of five of the United States’ deadliest natural disasters. One of the disasters featured in this book is the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.

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Contents 

Timeline

Introduction

What Is Human Migration?

Chapter 1

Stones, Bones, and DNA

Chapter 2

Out of Africa

Chapter 3

Asia to Australia

Chapter 4

Out of the Old World and Into the New

Chapter 5

Expansion and Colonization

Chapter 6

Oppression and Freedom

Chapter 7

The Future of Human Migration

Glossary     Resources     Index

TIMELINE

Introduction 

What Is Human Migration?

How has human migration affected the world we live in today?

During tens of thousands of years, humans have migrated around the earth to inhabit almost every continent. People continue to move from one place to another, bringing their ideas and cultures with them.

Fifty thousand years ago, a group of people stood at the edge of the lost continent of Sunda, in what is today south Asia. They faced a stretch of ocean at least 55 miles wide. On the distant shore lay New Guinea and Australia. In a feat of courage the world may have never seen before, these early humans built a crude raft, probably from bamboo, and launched themselves into the sea.

Fast forward to the spring of 2015. Three hundred men, women, and children huddle on the coast of Libya in North Africa. More than 1,000 miles of deceptively beautiful Mediterranean Sea separate them from what they seek—refuge in Europe. In an act of desperation the world sees often today, these families cram aboard a rickety wooden fishing boat and set sail.

Tens of thousands of years separate these two groups of people, but their stories have much in common. These people are migrating. They are people on the move from one place to another.

Why are they leaving one continent for another? What dangers do their journeys pose? How will their travels change the world?

What beliefs, hopes, and fears push them forward to new lands, new lives?

Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies travel 2,000 miles from southern Canada to the mountains of central Mexico. When the seasons change on the Serengeti Plains of East Africa, wildebeest gallop in massive herds around a 300-mile loop to find water and grass. Humpback whales swim 5,000 miles south in search of warmer waters in which to mate and give birth. What other species migrate? Humans!

Although other species travel, humans are master migrators. Since our origin as a species some 200,000 years ago, humans have been on the march. Human migration refers to the movement of people from one place to another. No other creature has trekked so far or inhabits so many different types of environments. The icy continent of Antarctica is the only place on Earth where humans have not settled permanently.

While animal migration is driven by a biological instinct sparked by a change in hormones or air temperature, humans rely on reason and logic. The rest of the animal kingdom migrates in order to find food, to reproduce, or in response to a change in seasons. But humans move in order to find better lives for themselves and their families.

LOST CONTINENT OF SUNDA

Sea levels were much lower 50,000 years ago, and the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo were joined to the Malay Peninsula. This area formed a land mass connected to Asia called Sunda. Today, much of Sunda is submerged and we are left with only the islands above the surface of the ocean.

 TRAVEL TIPS

It used to be said, The sun never sets on the British Empire. England had colonies on so many continents, including Africa, Asia, and North America, that it was always daylight in at least one of them.

TYPES OF HUMAN MIGRATION

There are four main types of human migration. The most common is home-community migration. This is when people move from one place to another within their own community. For example, when you graduate from high