{"id":898,"date":"2013-09-10T23:07:06","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T13:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2013-09-11T23:24:08","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T13:24:08","slug":"first-migrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=898","title":{"rendered":"First Migrants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bellwood.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-899\" alt=\"bellwood\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bellwood-300x181.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bellwood-300x181.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bellwood.jpg 480w, http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bellwood-290x175.jpg 290w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><strong>Rating:<\/strong> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/blankstar.png\" alt=\"&#9734;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/eu.wiley.com\/WileyCDA\/WileyTitle\/productCd-1405189088.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Bellwood, Peter. 2013. First Migrants. Wily Blackwell. ISBN 978 4051 8908 8.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the first topics I ever covered was human development. Fascinating. OK, maybe not when I was seen demonstrating <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brachiation\" target=\"_blank\">brachiation<\/a> by the Principal, but a good set of lessons nonetheless! It aroused my interest in the point that I&#8217;d previously buried in my thinking &#8211; human migration at the scale I was considering was an evolutionary process as well. The go-to text of the day was Don Arthur&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Survival-Don-R-Arthur\/dp\/B0010SFTIY\" target=\"_blank\">Survival<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; still on my shelves but a little battered. It went on a break-neck speed to consider the modern human condition so the chance to study development further was lost (or, more likely, yet to be understood &#8211; this book is over 40 years old!). A chance to work on Archaeology as a sideline to Conservation and Environmental Science added a few details but it stayed at that.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I see a new text and approach with Bellwood&#8217;s book and I wonder what has changed. Some of the basics are there &#8211; it&#8217;s still about anatomy and archaeology but it adds so much more as it traces the growth and spread of the human\/hominid populations from about 2m years ago to recently.\u00a0 What is immediately apparent, is the bringing together of\u00a0 a range of fields &#8211; not just archaeology but also ethnographic\/cultural and biological. We start with an overview that sets out the importance of migration. We are one of the species that, as far as we know, has been able to travel vast distances and set up new colonies in disparate places (although I&#8217;m sure some marine ecologists might argue something here). There are three main issues that seem to focus our attention:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>migration via the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans\" target=\"_blank\">out-of-Africa<\/a> hypothesis and variations;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;modern&#8221; human migrations largely in the last 100,000-10,000 years<\/li>\n<li>recent migrations, in numerous groups, in the last 10,000 years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Just creating this list opens up the way for discussion, but for the introduction, Bellwood is content in this opening chapter, to assess likely causes for these migrations (noting that demographics might seem currently unpopular, but most likely). The next stage is to marshal some likely sources of evidence and the quality of these data. Here, we use a range of techniques: genetics (using examples similar to the National Geographic&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/genographic.nationalgeographic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Genographic Project<\/a>), archaeology, anatomy but also linguistics. It&#8217;s this last part that intrigues. Changes in linguistic studies suggest we can trace languages back to common origins and thus chart the spread of peoples through their utterances! Chapter three returns me to older ground &#8211; hominid spread from Africa but adds a twist from current research &#8211; not only out-of-Africa 1 but also 2 with the argument that the first was a hominin and that our <em>homo sapiens<\/em> was a later migration creating some interesting admixtures with the indigenous groups. So, we have groups moving but where to? One of the obvious points is that the distribution of climate belts and landmasses make an East-West migration along the tropics obvious and easy. There are few adaptations to make since the climate is fairly similar. This means that it was possible to migrate to lands as far away and Australia and the contiguous Americas, although those migrations came far later. Moving along a landmass is one thing; moving between landmasses, another. Here we had a people capable of crossing ocean areas and land bridges.<\/p>\n<p>After the last Ice Age we underwent a global change whose implications are still with us (unless we get climate change wrong!). The post-glacial allowed warmer conditions to rise meaning that areas previously too cold were now accessible. It also meant that many usable coastal areas became flooded and new places would be needed. The first main move seems to have been the hunter-gatherers moving into previously frozen areas e.g. NW Europe and even places still considered marginal e.g. N Canada (as well as changes to distributions in places like Australia). These interglacial periods also gave us conditions to move into a vast greenery, today better known for aridity &#8211; the Sahara desert.<\/p>\n<p>This marks the end of a period of expansion through migration. Hunter-gatherer societies are very efficient at moving with light equipment and limited resources but this is not the best way to expand a population. Thus we turn to look at the first farmers. It starts by considering why farming started and where (and why not other places). It considers the Neolithic and the advances made so that colonies could be set up elsewhere. Perhaps this is the big change &#8211; small groups of hunter-gatherers versus larger-scale farming communities and technologies. From the Neolithic, we move to another key agricultural area &#8211; the &#8220;Fertile Crescent&#8221; foundation stock of so many key crops. It was these discoveries and the ability to move farming technologies that allowed the human populations to expand. Of course, this was only for specific crop types like wheat. Rice and other tropical crops also required their own sets of techniques and so we look at the rise of farming and populations in SE Asia. This leaves us just with the hybrid model of farming in Africa (often controlled by disease vector distributions) and the Americas (where migration was far later).\u00a0 A small, concluding, chapter recounts the main points of this remarkable journey.<\/p>\n<p>This is an excellent text. There&#8217;s the impression that often we only look at the current and yet we are dominated by the patterns of the past. It is important to see how ideas, opportunities, languages, luck? , it must have a place!) have been put together to create the patterns of human distribution we see today. Much of the pattern has been lost by the mass movements of populations over the last 400 years but enough evidence remains to show how important this is. By looking at a range of evidence and putting together a compelling case, the author has created not only an accurate guide to population changes but a thoroughly enjoyable read. It deserves to be one of the highlights of 2013!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rating: Bellwood, Peter. 2013. First Migrants. Wily Blackwell. ISBN 978 4051 8908 8. One of the first topics I ever covered was human development. Fascinating. OK, maybe not when I was seen demonstrating brachiation by the Principal, but a good set of lessons nonetheless! It aroused my interest in the point that I&#8217;d previously buried in my thinking &#8211; human migration at the scale I was considering was an evolutionary process as well. The go-to text of the day was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[169,172,173,26],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-agriculture","tag-archaeology","tag-history","tag-migration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}