Q: why did human cultures migrate to marginal parts of the planet?

silverharp

I'm thinking Inuit and cultures like it that must have set out from more benign climates which wouldnt have had a population pressure as a driving force?

slowburner

Perhaps those areas were not marginal when they arrived there?

WindSock

Could have been bullied out of it by other tribes?

The strongest get access to the best resources etc. Probably just wanted a quieter life.

JuliusCaesar

Of course, Wibbs is the resident expert for this.

However, I'll put in my uneducated guess. The speed and ease with which we travel means that we don't think of peoples traveling gradually over the course of generations. I expect that any movement was slow, and gradual, and so people found themselves adapting over generations to adverse conditions. (Is/was there anywhere that wasn't in some way 'adverse'?)

I await elucidation.

Tzar Chasm

From what I understand about Arctic populations, the people moved there because of resource abundance, so whilst we think of somewhere as marginal today cos its cold and somewhat inhospitable by our standards they might look at urban dwelling and say that was a bit tough due to the lack of elk wqnderin about for dinner.

Other places we consider inhospitable like the sahara have been the result oframatic climate change, it was a fairly ferti.e agricultural region up to Roman times

randd1

Food. We followed the food.

Wibbs

Tzar Chasm wrote: »

From what I understand about Arctic populations, the people moved there because of resource abundance, so whilst we think of somewhere as marginal today cos its cold and somewhat inhospitable by our standards they might look at urban dwelling and say that was a bit tough due to the lack of elk wqnderin about for dinner.

Defo. If you take away the cold and look at food resources they're higher than many places on earth. Higher and more predictable than most temperate regions for a start. Granted it's almost entirely carnivorous, but so long as you adapt you're quids in.

randd1 wrote: »

Food. We followed the food.

and looked for areas with less competition for said food. Plus we seem to have a real wanderlust as a species. Not all hominids had such itchy feet as us. Homo erectus aside. They were very like us in this respect. The "I wonder what's over there" gene/behaviour. Neandertals seemed to stay in Europe and extreme west Asia for 200,000 years. There's one theory that asks why we have so many people today with the extreme risk taking gene. The skydivers/extreme sports types. These genes were selected for as they were likely vanguards for migration type behaviour.

There's another one that probably adds to this, mate selection. Thinking about this thread while reading another thread that was talking about wolves made me think... The average pack is a family unit, sometimes quite a big one(the so called alpha pair are the parents basically). When wolves sexually mature they dont challenge the alpha or any of that(only happens in zoos), they leave the pack and go looking for a mate to set up their own and look for another territory to build. Hence they spread and quite rapidly too as their re release into Yellowstone in the US showed. Smaller human tribes are quite similar. Mostly family units. Members mature pair up and go further afield to start their own thing. Now it wouldn't be nearly a given or as rapid a process as in wolves but I'd say there would be some effect involved

HavingCrack

Wibbs wrote: »

Plus we seem to have a real wanderlust as a species. Not all hominids had such itchy feet as us. Homo erectus aside. They were very like us in this respect. The "I wonder what's over there" gene/behaviour. Neandertals seemed to stay in Europe and extreme west Asia for 200,000 years. There's one theory that asks why we have so many people today with the extreme risk taking gene. The skydivers/extreme sports types. These genes were selected for as they were likely vanguards for migration type behaviour.

I've always wondered is this an explanation for why so many people like to 'go travelling' for a few years, it's in our genes so to speak. The idea of reamaining in one location for all your life is clearly the de facto norm for the majority of the Earth's population but I always found it a bit unnatural personally.

Wibbs

Yea there does seem to be this need to go "walkabout" in lots of people/cultural refs. Every hero story involves a journey, most religions too. It's not all off us as you say but it's a lot of us. It seems to peak in the 20's, but I've noted anyway that there's another burst of it in post menopausal older women for some reason? The amount of elderly women in history that buggered off to explore this and that is remarkably high. What's going on there is beyond me.

slowburner

'Hormones are the mother of Adventure'.
- S. Lowburner (2012)
see here

Northumbria

• Forced out of their former territory by invaders
• Lack of resources in their homeland
• Overpopulation
• Better oportunities in a marginal landscape
• Simply expanding into it because they can
• Chance of a better life somewhere else

If we use the Icelanders as an example. Why didn't the Icelanders settle in the Britain or Ireland instead? Why specifically did those Norse individuals go to Iceland?
There are a number of probable reasons. First you have to consider just what is "marginal". To Italians it'd probably be Ireland, to the Irish it'd probably be the moorlands.
The ancestors of the Icelanders coming from what were already tough conditions would have found Iceland full of opportunities. There they could practice their traditional pastoral farming in a land where grass for grazing grows much more abundantly than elsewhere during the summer (due to the long days). There were also rich seas to fish and plenty of wood at the time of settlement.
Iceland wasn't considered marginal when it was settled. Wheat would have been hard to grow, but most of what could be grown in their homelands could be grown in Iceland.

Land only becomes marginal if you don't know what to do with it. Much of the Britain and Ireland would be marginal if it wasn't for sheep and cows, such areas would only be fit for forests.

Sindri

Abundant food resources is probably the determining factor in it.

Plus their culture would have been adapted to it, their tools and the like.

Also they probably never stopped migrating due to the climate. It got worse and became difficult to survive so they migrated further south. When they had first migrated into the Artic, the conditions would have been more favourable for whaling and the like.

Skerries

Northumbria wrote: »

the Britain or Ireland the Britain and Ireland

why do call it the Britain?

slowburner

Skerries wrote: »

why do call it the Britain?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056477113

looksee

Skerries wrote: »

why do call it the Britain?

He gained a 'the', you lost a 'you', probably for much the same reason.

celticcrash

Getting away from the mother in-law, what else?