BHP Lesson 29: Human Migrations

As farming spread, so did humans! These migrations led to increased populations, more innovations, and a huge increase in collective learning. What are the effects of the movement of people around the globe?

Driving Question: What are the positive and negative impacts of agriculture?

  • Humans spread farming and all its side benefits with them as they migrated around the globe. We know that this led to huge increases in population, rapid innovation, and changes in culture. Our collective learning grew faster than ever. This all seems great! What could possibly have gone wrong?

Word of the Day: Carrying Capacity

  • Definition: The largest number of individuals an environment can support.   
  • Every environment is different, and so where humans found themselves on Earth often determined to what extent their populations could grow. For example, expansion of Egyptian civilization was severely limited by the harsh desert environment beyond the Nile River Valley. Today, our environments can support far larger populations thanks to innovations that have increased food production. 

Lesson

  • Go to Khan Academy and watch the Crash Course video, Migrations & Intensifications. In this video, John and Hank Green explore how human migration out of Africa changed our lives and our planet for better and worse. As you watch, keep track of the positives and negatives in a T-chart. How did our lives improve? What was the downside of that incredibly hard agricultural work? How has our environment changed?

Historian’s Journal Prompt

  • Could COVID-19 be viewed as a negative effect of the switch to farming? Why or why not?
  • To help you answer this, think about how farmers started living closer to domesticated animals, became sedentary, and more disease resistant. Foragers, on the other hand, are not as disease resistant, and could even be wiped out by the common cold.        
Anonymous