| You have to approach it with the knowledge and motivation of those people. First off, you don't know where you're going, at all. You have never been more than 20-30 miles from your home base, and neither has anyone out of the 30-40 people you know. The world is dangerous, there are lions and bears and worse everywhere, let alone the unknown things that you probably believe in. Camping out in the open is incredible dangerous. You much prefer to stick to places you know and have feel safe in. You have to think about why you're moving. There are two major reasons for going anywhere. First, something dangerous has come. A pack of wolves that like to eat people [0], a forest fire, a food shortage, another group of humans (not all bad, now you have some trade, but this was probably also a major danger with fighting for territory/reproduction). This drives you just far enough away to escape the danger, and there's always a chance you'll come back to the familiar territory when the danger has passed. Secondly, your group has grown and has started acting like two groups. This new group will probably only move next door. There will still be familial bonds and cooperation. Add in that the population isn't growing all that fast and this is very slow movement. You have to think how and what you're moving. You do not have a backpack. You have a bunch of baskets and maybe a couple of (literal dead animal) bladders of water. You can only take what you can carry, if the wheel had been invented it probably can't get over the terrain you're on. You need to stick to freshwater, so you can go down a river, and maybe chance along the coast hoping to get to another river a day or so away. Your group consists of babies that need carrying, children that need protecting, old people that know stuff but are slow, and more mouths to feed than you would like. Also bear in mind you were walking on game trails no human had ever walked on in bare feet/crap shoes at best. You also need to make fire (or take it with you) every night. Finding a rive will basically stop any travel, they are a great place to fish/hunt and have accessible water. So actually coming across a usable river is likely to slow your advance by a couple of decades/centuries at the least. Long story short, going anywhere more than a day away in pre-history was scary, dangerous and very very hard, and moving next door was a lot easier. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_of_Soissons (This was in the 1700's in Europe, they had guns and steel. Imagine having only leather and stone tools. |