Migration
AP World History
Issues of Migration
• Diaspora
– A whole ethnic group is moved from a settled area over time
– Connotes scattering
• Exodus
– Depart to somewhere
• Push – Pull factors
• Role of language
• How each societies reacts to the culture and systems of the other
– Acculturation –
• Some culture exchanged but the groups remain distinct
– White stays white and Red stays Red
– Assimilation (Romanization, Americanization, Sincification)
• The lesser or weaker or smaller numbered society is absorbed into the stronger and is required to
become like the stronger culture either by society or by force.
– Syncretic (Roman-Greco society following conquest of Romans over Greeks, Creole)
• A whole new society is developed from the two
• Red and White become Pink.
– Accommodation
• One culture is allowed to exist within another as it is expected than they will eventually be
absorbed or assimilated. This is usually the case with a minority society and culture entering and
even conquering another that has higher numbers. It is a practice in tolerance and patience. In
the case of the Mongolians in South Asia, they came and conquered but left little in the way of
culture that was adopted by the peoples they conquered in this region. Some of their technology
was adapted but in most cases was not absorbed.
– Conquest
Causes and factors that impact
Disease and great pandemics
Economic opportunity
technologies that advance travel
technologies that advance communication
Introduction of new philosophies
Great leaders
New laws
Environment Guides Migration
• Mountain barriers frequently serve as linguistic borders
– In part of the Alps, speakers of German and Italian live on opposite sides of a
major ridge
– Portions of mountain rim along the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent form
the border between Semitic and Indo-European tongues
• Environmental barriers and natural routeways guided linguistic groups
along certain paths
• Indo-Europeans traveled through low mountain passes to the Indian
subcontinent, avoiding the Himalayas and barren Deccan Plateau
• In India today, the Indo-European/Dravidian language boundary seems to
approximate an ecological boundary
• Migrants were often attracted to new lands that seemed environmentally
similar to their homelands
– They could pursue adaptive strategies known to them
– Germanic Indo-Europeans chose familiar temperate zones in America, New
Zealand, and Australia
– Semitic peoples rarely spread outside arid and semiarid climates
– Ancestors of modern Hungarians left grasslands of inner Eurasia for new
homes in the grassy Alföld, one of the few prairie areas of Europe
Language as a Historical Source
• Historical linguistics can help historians to understand
the past.
• It is a guide to thought patterns of a people; it helps to
explain social and political patterns and historical
relationships between groups.
• The reconstruction of the migrations of the Indo-
Europeans, Bantu, Polynesians, and early Americans is
based on linguistic studies.
• The similarities and differences in language development
that occurred as people moved into new regions and left
their original group can tell us much about societal
values, social structure, material life, and migration
patterns.
Terms used in the study of
language
• Language — tongues that cannot be mutually
understood
• Dialects — variant forms of a language that have not lost
mutual comprehension
– A speaker of English can understand the various dialect of the
language
– A dialect is distinctive enough in vocabulary and pronunciation to
label its speaker
– Some 6,000 languages and many more dialects are spoken
today
• Lingua franca — a language that spreads over a wide
area where it is not the mother tongue
– A language of communication and commerce
– Swahili language has this status in much of East Africa
Case Studies:
Foundations Period of
World History,
8000 BCE – 600 CE
Migration vs. Nomadic Lifestyle &
Movement of Peoples
• “Out of Africa” movement of man populating the earth
• Aryans into Indian Subcontinent
• Bantu migrations within African Continent
• Religious diasporas of the late classical period
including the Jewish and Christian movements
• Germanic peoples from Black Sea into Roman
Empire across Northern European Plain
• Migration period of transition following the fall of the
great classical civilizations
– Huns vs. Xiong-nu – same peoples?
– Vikings migrated although initially were marauders
and nomads (Rurik the Rus, Normans)
The Great Migration in Oceania
and Indian Ocean
• About 4000 years ago Austronesian-speaking peoples
expanded eastward from Melanesia to Fiji, Tonga, and
Samoa.
• They practiced agriculture, had domestic animals, and used
complex fishing techniques.
• A distinctive pottery style, Lapita, helps to identify their
settlements.
• From Tonga and Samoa they moved to Polynesia and
perhaps westward to Madagascar.
• In the many Polynesian islands cultures evolved differently.
• Basic common principles of social and economic
organization include linguistic similarity, complex agricultural
forms, and stratified chiefdoms based upon lineage and
ritual.
•The Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic tribes from
Central Asia with a ruling class of unknown origin and other
subjugated tribes .
•These nomadic people were considered so dangerous and
disruptive that the Qin Dynasty began construction of the
Great Wall to protect China from Xiongnu attacks.
•Relations between early Chinese dynasties and the Xiongnu
were complex, including repeated periods of military conflict
and intrigue, interspersed with exchanges of tribute and
trade, and marriage treaties.
The Hephthalites were a Central Asian nomadic confederation whose
precise origins and composition remain obscure. According to Chinese
chronicles they were originally a tribe living to the north of the Great Wall
and were known as Hoa or Hoa-tun.[1] Elsewhere they were called White
Huns. The Huna had already established themselves in Afghanistan and
the modern North-West Frontier Province of present day Pakistan by the
first half of the fifth century, and the Gupta emperor Skandagupta had
repelled a Hūna invasion in 455 before the Hephthalite clan came along.
The Hephthalites with their capital at Bamiyan continued the pressure on
ancient India's northwest frontier and broke east by the end of the fifth
century, hastening the disintegration of the Gupta Empire.
The Spread of Civilization in Africa
• Africa was the home of the ancestors of modern humans
and participated in the early development of civilization
along the Nile river valley. The continent had contacts
with other world areas, both receiving and sending
cultural influences.
• Geographic influences -
– Although most of Africa's 12,000,000 square miles are in the
tropics, much of its surface is composed of savannas, open
grasslands, arid plains, and deserts. Large rivers flow to the coast
over falls that hamper easy access to the interior.
• Climatic change was important.
– The Sahara was far better watered during the Late Stone Age, but
by 3000 B.C.E. was turning into desert.
– The desiccation forced migration to the north and south and made
the sudanic region a center of cultural development.
Geographic
influences
Agriculture, Iron, and Bantu Peoples.
• Domesticated crops appeared in sub-Saharan Africa before 3000
B.C.E.
– Africans soon developed their own crops in a band stretching from
Ethiopia to West Africa.
• Domesticated animals were introduced from Asia.
– The camel, arriving in the first century C.E., made the desert much more
accessible to trade and communication.
– The presence of the disease-carrying tsetse fly limited the use of horses
and cattle in many regions.
• Agriculture and the use of iron probably spread into Africa from
Mediterranean and Middle East civilization centers.
– Most of Africa passed directly from stone to iron technology. Knowledge
of iron working spread from Phoenician settlements in North Africa, from
Red Sea ports into Ethiopia and East Africa, and down the Nile from
Egypt.
– By about 1000 C.E. it had reached the southernmost regions of Africa.
• The use of iron for tools and weapons increased societal complexity
and gave their makers ritual and political power.
Bantu Migrations
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/c
a/books/bkf3/imaps/AC_06_206_bantu/
AC_06_206_bantu.html
The Bantu Dispersal
• The diffusion of agriculture and iron
accompanied a great movement of Africans
speaking Bantu languages.
• Possible population increase caused by the
arrival of people fleeing Saharan desiccation
forced movement from a homeland in eastern
Nigeria.
• The use of iron weapons assisted their
conquest of stone-using hunters and
gatherers.
• After long and gradual migration through
central and eastern Africa, the Bantu, by the
13th century C.E., had reached the southern
extremity of Africa.
• Few indigenous hunting and gathering
societies survived the migration.
• The early culture of the proto-Bantu
depended upon agriculture, fishing, and
raising goats and cattle.
• They lived in villages organized around
kinship ties. A council of elders led the
villages; religious beliefs centered upon
spirits inhabiting the natural world.
• During the long period of migrations many
societies developed more complex forms of
technology, commerce, political organization,
and cultural life..