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sinmantky t1_iz3r6ns wrote

why would early humans go thru Georgia then to Europe, rather than going towards Iran's coastal borders?

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Snufflepuffster t1_iz3ytg4 wrote

do you think someone in Africa 40k years ago stood up and said 'Let's go to China.’

No, that's ridiculous. They just went wherever and the extent/direction of their route was related to migration pressure.

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sinmantky t1_iz44hkl wrote

that's what I thought at first, just follow the animals. But then, the fertile crescent would be there, so animals would be more plentiful there, rather than the hilly Turkish terrain.

One interesting story I heard is that early humans tried to follow the sun, being curious to where that bright shining thing kept going and where it went, they just followed it and kept going East.

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Peter_deT t1_iz474gp wrote

The earliest migrations stuck to the coast (abundant food, better climate), which is why they reached Australia over 50,000 years ago - well before inland Asia was populated. Places like Tibet and central Australia were among the last.

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sinmantky t1_iz4amx6 wrote

Yes, but why through the harsh Anatolian/Caucus hills? Was animal plentiful compared to the coast? Were they chased by some archaic human? Principle of least effort would make humans go thru the easier path.

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NeedlessPedantics t1_iz7kzui wrote

You’re thinking about this in terms of individuals making conscious decisions within the time frame of a single life, rather than successive generations of groups of people changing, moving, splitting, returning, dying off, repopulating entire regions over thousands upon thousands of years.

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culturalappropriator t1_iz3s0vb wrote

I mean, they didn't have maps so there was probably a lot of wandering and accidentally landing places.

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differentiatedpans t1_iz4cgjo wrote

Keep in mind the world's oceans looks different 40k years ago who know where the corridors were and where water was.

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Peter_deT t1_iz46hk3 wrote

The earliest hominids in Georgia (at Dmanisi) date around 1.2 million years ago. Not modern humans. Migration routes are heavily conditioned by the landscape - which was very different (eg the Alps had a large ice-cap in ice ages, and some regions were much more arid)

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