Human Migrations

From our origins in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens has spread across the globe. By creating a human migration timeline for your students with these lessons and resources, you’ll help them understand how we dispersed so widely, and how material conditions influenced the societies that developed in different regions.

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How Did the First Humans Live
Lesson 6.3
Big History Project
Early Humans
How Did the First Humans Live?
Early humans had one job— survival. Collective learning increased their chances of survival, but the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were still hard. Did their ways of life have advantages over our own, though?
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Exploration and Interconnection
Lesson 8.1
Big History Project
Expansion & Interconnection
Exploration & Interconnection
The explorations of this period linked the world zones, and the exchange of ideas, people, diseases, plants, and animals resulted in profound global changes. From what people ate to the gods they prayed to—no area of life was unaffected.
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Columbian Exchange
Lesson 3.1
1200 to Present
Transoceanic Connections
Columbian Exchange
The connection between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas yielded a global network of exchange that we can thank for much of modern life. But two horrors—the American slave trade and the decimation of Indigenous peoples by disease—are also legacies of the Columbian Exchange.
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Routes of Exchange
Lesson 2.2
AP®
Networks of Exchange
Routes of Exchange
From c. 1200 to 1450 CE, exchange networks included the Indian Ocean system, Silk Roads, trans-Saharan, and Mediterranean routes. The trade of physical goods and intellectual and cultural “goods” shaped social structures worldwide.
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Industrialization Migration and Empire
Lesson 6.3
AP®
Consequences of Industrialization
Industrialization Migration and Empire
The human migrations that took place between 1750 and 1900 CE were massive. Every continent involved in the shifting political map—the result of imperialism and colonialism and fueled by industrialization.
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