Analysis of Human Migration Essay

An Analysis of Human Migration Ever since humans learnt to grow crops as a steady source of food humans have migrated In search of conditions better suited to their needs and comforts. Although all of us but the 30-40 million that choose to live the nomadic life have abandoned that lifestyle and moved on to a more ‘civilized’ modern era, migration still remains an option for those of us seeking to take residence In an alternate region of mother earth. The National Geographic Society [1] defines human migration as The movement of people from one place in the world to another for the purpose of taking up ermanent or semipermanent residence, usually across a political boundary. ‘ Migration Inside a landmass or political region Is called Internet migration and outside a physical or political border Is called external migration. For example Inside moving inside the continent of Australia would be internal migration but moving into a different continent overseas would be external migration. There are a variety of causes for migration, but they havent changed much through the years and remain fairly similar to the reasons our ancestors chose to migrate. These reasons can be categorized into two sections; these being push factors and pull factors. Push factors are reasons for leaving a region because of negative properties of the location and Pull factors are reasons for moving into a place because of positive properties of a location. Such factors can further be divided Into Environmental factors like climate, Political Factors Ilke war, Economic factors Ilke work, cultural factors Ilke education and utility factors like geographic location and socioeconomic status. Statistically speaking, the humans are extremely successful as a species. The 7 billionth human was born not long ago and the 10 billionth Is not far away, calculated to be born around the end of the century. The human race Is not only vast, we are also incredibly diverse and this is what defines us as a species. Meaning when we lost a part of our culture we lose a bit of what it means to be human. This brings us to one of the biggest drawbacks of migration, known as Cultural Extinction. Cultural extinction occurs when a family that Is part of a smaller culture migrates and the next generation of the respective family is only exposed to the native language and culture, since culture and tradition is only carried through families, the prospective bearer of this culture is burned out, ending a vein of this precious cultural blood. But our cultural diversity Itself poses a question. How Is It that we as a human race are so diverse in culture, and yet so similar? A research project named ‘The Genographic project Was created by Spencer Wells for the purpose of answering this question and tracing human movement in prehistoric times. Even though the fields of palaeoanthropology and archaeology already enable us to access this Information, the Genographic project uses a newer method that allows us to find out how closely we are related to each other, enabling us to map out a family tree going back millions IOF4