I'm doing a research paper for history and it got me thinking about my independent study project I did last year regarding ancient human migration....
It's getting near the end of the semester and I'm writing a paper on this subject, so to get my brain juice going I'm adding a Scholarly Thing (lovely name, I know :) ) to my blog today so I can feel academic.
Hope you learn something, because this is what I get to devote an entire paper to!
Humans around the world are, for the most part, the same; we all have two arms, two legs, a head and shoulders, et cetera. But how did we all get to where we are? How did I end up in North America when someone else ended up in an island in Oceania? We are more or less extremely similar--the only major variant being our locations.
The new school answer to this question is that modern day humans--homo sapiens--evolved into humans that we are today somewhere in eastern Africa. From there, humans migrated into Arabia and came to populate (over thousands of years) the world. Anthropologists and geneticists have been able to track the paths ancient humans took to travel the world by sequencing thousands of mitochondrial DNA sequences.
The first Australians--known to the Western world by the name of the Aboriginals--arrived in Australia approximately 50,000 years ago. Contrary to previous opinion, the Aboriginals made it to Australia mostly by walking. At this time, still during the most recent ice age, ocean levels were dramatically lower, creating land bridges (the most famous of which is the land bridge through the Bering Strait) and increasing the breadth of continents and other land masses. The ocean levels near Australia, especially in the region between southern Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, are relatively shallow--thus, during the ice age, it was quite possible to walk from Thailand to Australia. Only about forty miles of open ocean would have had to be crossed in a boat or raft, making it much easier than scientists previously thought for ancient humans to originally reach Australia.
The religion of the Aboriginals began soon after, and many myths and beliefs of this religion reference the arrival of the first Australians to the continent--traced back to around 50,000 years ago. I find this so interesting-the creation of the world, for the Aboriginals, begins with (though this probably was not the intent of the religion) the first of their ancestors reaching their homeland. Once the Aboriginals had arrived on Australia and stayed there for any number of generations, the last ice age ended and again the sea levels around Australia rose, not only cutting off other ancient populations from reaching Australia, but also isolating the Aboriginals. The Aboriginal culture then went on to develop, change, and become more complex. Religion became more pronounced. The Aboriginals believe that their ancestors created the world (50,000 years ago) during what is referred to as the "Dreamtime", "Dreaming", or, to clarify for specifically the English language (because we associate "dreams" with "sleep") "the everywhen". Cool word, no? The ancestors, or spirits, of the Aboriginals created the world and the Aboriginals themselves. Their power and existence can still be accessed today, the Aboriginals believe, through "songlines"--the veins of power, essence, and being that the ancestors used to create the world during the Dreamtime. This, among many other aspects of Aboriginal life, adds to the importance of contact with nature in everyday life, and the respect and recognition of ancestors.
If you find this interesting (which hopefully you do!!) check out the Atlas of the Human Journey of National Geographic's Genographic Project.
Hope you found this interesting and easy to understand. Comment with questions!!
And, yes, congradulations--if you're reading this you survived and read through an entire Scholarly Thing
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