Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

The study examines the history of human migration which includes the peopling of the world to regions where there was previously no human habitation, during the Upper Paleolithic. The inquiry starts from the pre-modern history of migration of human populations beginning with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia and Homo sapiens appears to have occupied all of Africa and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 BC. The study explores some places, such as Turkey and Azerbaijan, which had substantial cultural transformation after the migration of relatively small elite populations. The evidence indicates that early humans migrated due to many factors, such as changing climate and landscape and inadequate food-supply. The Age of Exploration and European colonialism has led to an accelerated pace of migration leading to the local populations, such as the Aboriginal people in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Japan and the United States, to be numerically overwhelmed by incoming settlers. On the side of Modern History, the study posits that Industrialization encouraged migration wherever it appeared. The First and Second World Wars, genocides, and crises sparked by them, had an enormous impact on migration. For example, Muslims moved from the Balkan to Turkey, while Christians moved the other way, during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Also the Russian Civil War caused some three million Russians, Poles, and Germans to migrate out of the new Soviet Union. Furthermore, the paper interrogates the contemporary history of migration and concludes that many people leave their home countries in order to look for economic opportunities in another country. Others migrate to be with family members who have migrated or because of political conditions in their countries. Education is another reason for international migration, as students pursue their studies abroad. Finally, using oral and written sources and applying the narrative and analytical tool, the study also employed the qualitative analysis method (a scientific method of gathering non numerical data). The method seeks to understand phenomena from the perspective of the individual or group. Finally, being one of the modest attempts at documenting the history of human migration, this study has extended further the frontiers of the historiography of human migration which until recently has remained unexplored.

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