Migrations

2nd to 5th century Migration Period

Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of
Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of
Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across
Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years BCE. Migration to the Americas took place
20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific Islands were
colonized. Later population movements notably include the Neolithic Revolution, Indo-
European expansion, and the Early Medieval Great Migrations including Turkic expansion.

Early humans migrated due to many factors such as changing climate and landscape and
inadequate food supply. The evidence indicates that the ancestors of the Austronesian peoples
spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago.
Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples
migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed
by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years
ago.[2] Indo-Aryan migration to and within Northern India is presumed to have taken place in
the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India (ca. 1700
to 1300 BC). From 180 BC, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those
led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans in the north-western
Indian subcontinent.[3][4][5]

From about 750 BC, the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all
directions. In Europe two waves of migrations dominate demographic distributions, that of
the Celtic people, and the later Migration Period from the east. Other examples are small
movements like ancient Scots moving from Hibernia to Caledonia and Magyars into
Pannonia (modern-day Hungary). Turkic peoples spread across most of Central Asia into
Europe and the Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries. Recent research suggests that
Madagascar was uninhabited until Austronesian seafarers from Indonesia arrived during the
5th and 6th centuries AD. Subsequent migrations from both the Pacific and Africa further
consolidated this original mixture, and Malagasy people emerged.[6]
One common hypothesis of the Bantu expansion

Before the expansion of the Bantu languages and their speakers, the southern half of Africa is
believed to have been populated by Pygmies and Khoisan speaking people, today occupying
the arid regions around the Kalahari Desert and the forest of Central Africa. By about 1000
AD Bantu migration had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Banu Hilal
and Banu Ma'qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribes from the Arabian Peninsula who
migrated westwards via Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries. Their migration strongly
contributed to the arabization and islamization of the western Maghreb, which was until then
dominated by Berber tribes. Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlement
of Germans. The 13th century was the time of the great Mongol and Turkic migrations across
Eurasia.[7]

Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese expanded southward in a process
known as nam tiến (southward expansion).[8] Manchuria was separated from China proper by
the Inner Willow Palisade, which restricted the movement of the Han Chinese into Manchuria
during the Qing Dynasty, as the area was off-limits to the Han until the Qing started
colonizing the area with them later on in the dynasty's rule.[9]

The Age of Exploration and European Colonialism led to an accelerated pace of migration
since Early Modern times. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American
ports.[10] In the 19th century over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas.[11] The local
populations or tribes, such as the Aboriginal people in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia,
Japan[12] and the United States, were usually far overwhelmed numerically by the settlers.