Over at The Loom, there is an interesting article ‘Tree or Trellis’ that takes another look at the ‘out of Africa’ theory for man’s history. Using DNA evidence the newer theory is that instead of one great migration, there were about three and at least once, there was movement back towards Africa. I find this kind of stuff is fascinating.
I am more inclined to think that this is a more realist view of the events that happened millions of years ago. However, I more inclined to think that migration was happening all the time and occasionally a large movement would occur following some sort of disaster such as drought, volcano activity or earthquakes.
If you thinks about it, it sounds just like something that humans would do. In my learned experience (BA Hons in life), as populations grew, they expanded into free space. I would go with the idea that they followed the coastline and great rivers settling at points not too far from the recent homes. However, there would be intermixing with the older settlements with individuals moving from one settlement to another, some back to older settlements, either for marriage purposes and other reasons such as expulsions from groups. By the way, I use the term settlements loosely here. I read somewhere that at an expansion of 1 mile a year, humans could have colonised the coastline from the Southern Africa through the South of Asia to Australia in a couple thousand years.
Evolution plays its hand slowly and there is no proof that newer evolutionary cousins did not mate with the older cousins thus adding to the mix that eventually made us who we are today.
Have a read of the Loom Article, I have a feeling I will be picking up more stories in the future.
Cheers