Geography: Migration and Climate
OER PROJECT: BIG HISTORY / LESSON 4.4 ACTIVITY GEOGRAPHY: MIGRATION AND CLIMATE 1Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “Geography: Migration and Climate,” OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/PurposeAnalyzing patterns of climate, physical features, and human populations will help you understand how climate and geography affected human migration. Key informationWhen geographers think about migration, they begin by considering why people are moving—what are the push and pull factors making them move?•Push factorsare things that force movement away from an area, such as drought, famine, climate change, andcivil war. •Pull factors are things that encourage movement to an area, such as fertile land, potential to make more money,and less risk of natural disasters.Geographers sometimes classify push and pull factors as geographic opportunities that made migration easier, such as rivers, and geographic barriers that made migration harder, such as mountains. Process1. Review the first three slides of the “Migration and Climate Maps” slideshow, and then answer the followingquestions:•What was the climate like from c. 160,000 to 70,000 years ago? Identify locations of glaciers and deserts.
OER PROJECT: BIG HISTORY / LESSON 4.4 ACTIVITY GEOGRAPHY: MIGRATION AND CLIMATE 2•Where were early human populations distributed from c. 160,000 to 70,000 years ago? Identify the locations(continents or regions).•What were the geographic barriers that made migration harder for humans from c. 160,000 to 70,000 years ago?•What were the geographic opportunities that made migration easier for humans from c. 160,000 to 70,000 years ago?•Where were early humans migrating to from c. 160,000 to 70,000 years ago? Identify continents or regions and usecardinal directions (north, south, east, west) to describe how humans moved.
OER PROJECT: BIG HISTORY / LESSON 4.4 ACTIVITY GEOGRAPHY: MIGRATION AND CLIMATE 32. Now, review slides 4 through 7 and answer the following questions for the period from c. 70,000 to 15,000 years ago.•What was the climate like from c. 70,000 to 15,000 years ago?•Where were early human populations distributed from c. 70,000 to 40,000 years ago? How did this distributionchange from 40,000 to 15,000 years ago?•What were the geographic barriers that made migration harder for humans c. 70,000 to 15,000 years ago?•What were the geographic opportunities that made migration easier for humans from c. 70,000 to 15,000 years ago?
OER PROJECT: BIG HISTORY / LESSON 4.4 ACTIVITY GEOGRAPHY: MIGRATION AND CLIMATE 43.Watch the Green Saharavideo and answer the following questions for the period from c. 11,000 to 5,000 years ago.•What caused the climate of the Sahara region to change from c. 11,000 to 5,000 years ago?•What were the geographic challenges and opportunities that made the humans who lived in the Sahara regionmigrate from c. 7,000 to 5,000 years ago?4. Finally, using evidence from the slideshow and video, write a four- or five-sentence response to this prompt:•Explain how climate and geography impacted early human migration from c. 160,000 to 5,000 years ago. Thinkabout push and pull factors, such as geographic opportunities and barriers.