for moving could be every bit as personal as the reasons why
modern people sometimes leave their homelands to move
somewhere else. Th ere would have been heroes leading their
suff ering peoples to new lands, great visionaries foreseeing
prosperity just beyond the next mountainside, people want-
ing to give their children better lives than they had, and
people who had no clue as to what they were doing. Th eir
motivations both heroic and mundane have been reduced to
enigmatic works of art—paintings on rocks and cave walls,
carvings of stone and antlers, and clay sculptures. Th e art
only hints at the complex lives of the ancient migrants.
One of the great controversies about human movements
is where the Neanderthals came from and how they were re-
lated to modern humans. At present, most evidence suggests
that the Neanderthals were a diff erent species from modern
humans and may have developed in Europe or the Near East,
but their origins remain cloudy. Th eir remains have been
found throughout southern and central Europe as well as in
parts of western Asia and the Near East. Th eir spread may
have been motivated by their following the migrations of
herds of animals.
Modern humans may have brought something new to
migration: the desire to explore. Amid the discussions of
famines, wars, and other motivations for great movements of
ancient people, one may take note that there are people who
like to explore, to know what is beyond the horizon. One ex-
plorer or a small number of exploring companions could fi nd
a new place to live and go home and tell about it, inspiring
others to move to that new place.
Th e ancient world was a vast place, but people seemed to
move through it as rapidly as the climate would allow. Gla-
ciers expanded, blocking people, but then retracted, open-
ing new routes for movement. It seems remarkable from the
archaeological discoveries of ancient peoples that when an
opportunity for movement presented itself, somebody took
that opportunity and moved on. One group of ancient peo-
ples moved east along the southern coast of Asia. Th e lands
of southern India would have been very diff erent from those
of the southern Near East, yet people migrated into the lands
and adapted to their new environment.
A migration almost inevitably requires adaptations to
new environments, and the fi rst migrants would have been
challenged by new animals and plants and would have had
to fi gure out what was edible and what was not. Resources
for tools would have varied, and the fi rst migrants would
have had to adapt their tool-making skills to the woods, fi -
bers, and stones that they found. Th e fi rst people in South-
east Asia would have found themselves in immense bamboo
forests populated by wildcats and giant apes twice as tall
they were. Th e fi rst people in the Americas would have en-
countered animals unlike any they had seen before, such
as giant sloths. Even so, people made their moves into new
lands and fi gured out ways to survive in environments for
which they had no natural adaptations. It seems likely that
some migrations failed only to be tried again by new groups
of people.
By the time written language developed in Sumer, the
migrations into new territories were not yet complete. A mul-
titude of islands in the Pacifi c Ocean were still unpopulated.
Much of the interior of Asia was cold, dry, and unwelcoming,
and people were only just beginning to fi nd ways to live there.
For some cultures, migration had become a way of daily life.
For instance, the Lapps had begun following herds of reindeer
in ancient prehistory; as the northern glaciers melted, the
reindeer changed their routes ever more northward, and the
Lapps followed. Some migratory peoples had taken charge of
their migrations. Th ese people domesticated horses, sheep, or
cattle and drove their herds to summer quarters and then to
winter quarters, back and forth, until outsiders forced them
out of their traditional ranges or killed them or they chose to
settle down.
War was a powerful motivator for migrations. Some
peoples developed warrior cultures, and they migrated by in-
vading lands occupied by farmers or pastoral peoples. Th ese
peoples sometimes succumbed to the invaders, fought the
invaders off , or fl ed. Prosperous regions could attract migra-
tions and war. Th e cultures of ancient Mesopotamia had a
persistent problem with attempts by nomadic cultures to set-
tle on their lands. Ancient Egypt drew Libyans who wanted
Egypt’s farmlands. Th e Western Roman Empire had to cope
with Germanic tribes that wanted to move into Gaul and
share the benefi ts of Roman civilization. Ancient history has
many cases where entire populations of people abandoned
their homes to escape war, only to displace some other group
of people who in turn moved on. For example, the Chinese
drove the Xiongnu out of central Asia. Th e Xiongnu were a
violent people who had long vexed China with their raiding
of Chinese settlements. Many historians believe the Xiongnu
were the ancestors of the Huns, who drove ever westward,
displacing the people in their way and reshaping the societies
of Asia and eventually Europe.AFRICA
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Ancient Africa was home to many ethnic populations, but
scholars know little about their history or movements. What
is known is that discrete groups of people gradually spread
throughout the continent, so that by the end of the ancient
period Africa’s regions were home to specifi c ethnic and lan-
guage groups. Most peoples are defi ned by language groups.
Historians assume that groups that share similar languages
must have come from a common culture. So, for example,
the “Bantu” people are defi ned by the language they speak,
a branch of the Niger-Congo language family that is spoken
today in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Th e Berber people of
North Africa spoke Afro-Asiatic languages, related to the Se-
mitic languages of the Near East. Th e Khoisan of southern Af-
rica spoke a unique language that included clicking sounds.migration and population movements: Africa 689