[shellfishgene]

I doubt it's correct to assume groups of humans in Africa one day decided to 'colonize' another place and walked thousands of kilometers to settle down elsewhere. It's probably more like a slow expansion (and reduction) of the settled area, no?

[throwup238]

Humans were nomadic before agriculture so they would have been moving all the time anyway. There would have been no settling down.

It’s more likely competitive pressure forced them to expand out further because to a small group, even a small conflict with a neighboring tribe that costs them a few of their fittest members would be particularly traumatic and risky. It’s just easier and safer to migrate.

Archaic humans made it out to South East Asia over a million years ago back when the sea hadn’t even risen to form the major islands like Indonesia. Migration is in our DNA.

[airstrike]

Both processes could coexist, right? I could see myself waking up one day and saying "what's the farthest we can get to? maybe there are amazing things at the end of the journey"

[bee_rider]

I’m not 100% clear on what the two processes are. In particular, early humans already were pretty mobile. So they’d be going from place to place, hunting as they go. Maybe following some migratory animals. If you got wanderlust, I guess you’d only make it a couple days before you ran out of food, so maybe some dozens of miles, and then you are back to doing typical human stuff, right?

[withinboredom]

it can also be stupid politics/religion: "your village is the reason for our famine, your entire village is banned from here. you will walk until you see the mountains and until you no longer see them behind you" ... next thing you know, you're in europe or asia.

[miniwark]

They where all nomadics, so the concept of a village did not exist yet. It was more like family related moving groups, or maybe "clans". That said, at an individual level there was probably a concept of people exchange when meeting another group, or banning of an individual.

[withinboredom]

yeah, can replace "village" with "group of people" like families or clans. Basically just 'we blame you for our problems so you need to leave' type of situation.