Migration and the prehistory of humanity

Human migration has been occurring for more than 2 million years within and beyond the African homeland, and humans have become the world’s most dominant and universal mammalian species. Our patterns of biological and cultural diversity exist in large part due to this remarkable human ability to migrate into and through all landscapes capable of sustaining life, as well as across sea. In my presentation I focus on 3 phases of hominin/human expansion; the first reaching Indonesia through Asia from Africa around 2-1.5 million years ago; the second being the Late Pleistocene migrations, also from an ultimate African source, of modern humans (Homo sapiens) across Eurasia and into Australia and the Americas; and the third being the migrations of farmers and the ancestral speakers of many of the world’s largest modern language families, consequent upon the several developments of food production and increasing technology (e.g. in boat construction, wheeled vehicles) during the Holocene