migration and population movements: Africa for moving could be every bit as personal as the reasons why modern people sometimes leave their homelands to move somewhere else There would have been heroes leading their suffering peoples to new lands, great visionaries foreseeing prosperity just beyond the next mountainside, people wanting to give their children better lives than they had, and people who had no clue as to what they were doing Their motivations both heroic and mundane have been reduced to enigmatic works of art—paintings on rocks and cave walls, carvings of stone and antlers, and clay sculptures The art only hints at the complex lives of the ancient migrants One of the great controversies about human movements is where the Neanderthals came from and how they were related to modern humans At present, most evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were a different species from modern humans and may have developed in Europe or the Near East, but their origins remain cloudy Their remains have been found throughout southern and central Europe as well as in parts of western Asia and the Near East Their spread may have been motivated by their following the migrations of herds of animals Modern humans may have brought something new to migration: the desire to explore Amid the discussions of famines, wars, and other motivations for great movements of ancient people, one may take note that there are people who like to explore, to know what is beyond the horizon One explorer or a small number of exploring companions could find a new place to live and go home and tell about it, inspiring others to move to that new place The ancient world was a vast place, but people seemed to move through it as rapidly as the climate would allow Glaciers expanded, blocking people, but then retracted, opening new routes for movement It seems remarkable from the archaeological discoveries of ancient peoples that when an opportunity for movement presented itself, somebody took that opportunity and moved on One group of ancient peoples moved east along the southern coast of Asia The lands of southern India would have been very different from those of the southern Near East, yet people migrated into the lands and adapted to their new environment A migration almost inevitably requires adaptations to new environments, and the fi rst migrants would have been challenged by new animals and plants and would have had to figure out what was edible and what was not Resources for tools would have varied, and the fi rst migrants would have had to adapt their tool-making skills to the woods, fibers, and stones that they found The fi rst people in Southeast Asia would have found themselves in immense bamboo forests populated by wildcats and giant apes twice as tall they were The fi rst people in the Americas would have encountered animals unlike any they had seen before, such as giant sloths Even so, people made their moves into new lands and figured out ways to survive in environments for which they had no natural adaptations It seems likely that 689 some migrations failed only to be tried again by new groups of people By the time written language developed in Sumer, the migrations into new territories were not yet complete A multitude of islands in the Pacific Ocean were still unpopulated Much of the interior of Asia was cold, dry, and unwelcoming, and people were only just beginning to find ways to live there For some cultures, migration had become a way of daily life For instance, the Lapps had begun following herds of reindeer in ancient prehistory; as the northern glaciers melted, the reindeer changed their routes ever more northward, and the Lapps followed Some migratory peoples had taken charge of their migrations These people domesticated horses, sheep, or cattle and drove their herds to summer quarters and then to winter quarters, back and forth, until outsiders forced them out of their traditional ranges or killed them or they chose to settle down War was a powerful motivator for migrations Some peoples developed warrior cultures, and they migrated by invading lands occupied by farmers or pastoral peoples These peoples sometimes succumbed to the invaders, fought the invaders off, or fled Prosperous regions could attract migrations and war The cultures of ancient Mesopotamia had a persistent problem with attempts by nomadic cultures to settle on their lands Ancient Egypt drew Libyans who wanted Egypt’s farmlands The Western Roman Empire had to cope with Germanic tribes that wanted to move into Gaul and share the benefits of Roman civilization Ancient history has many cases where entire populations of people abandoned their homes to escape war, only to displace some other group of people who in turn moved on For example, the Chinese drove the Xiongnu out of central Asia The Xiongnu were a violent people who had long vexed China with their raiding of Chinese settlements Many historians believe the Xiongnu were the ancestors of the Huns, who drove ever westward, displacing the people in their way and reshaping the societies of Asia and eventually Europe AFRICA BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL Ancient Africa was home to many ethnic populations, but scholars know little about their history or movements What is known is that discrete groups of people gradually spread throughout the continent, so that by the end of the ancient period Africa’s regions were home to specific ethnic and language groups Most peoples are defined by language groups Historians assume that groups that share similar languages must have come from a common culture So, for example, the “Bantu” people are defined by the language they speak, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family that is spoken today in much of sub-Saharan Africa The Berber people of North Africa spoke Afro-Asiatic languages, related to the Semitic languages of the Near East The Khoisan of southern Africa spoke a unique language that included clicking sounds