Judy Dodge Cummings - Human Migration: Investigate the Global Journey of Humankind

200,000 BCE

Homo sapiens emerge in Africa as a distinct species. This is the species to which all living human beings on Earth belong.

74,000 BCE

A super-volcano erupts on Mount Toba on the island of Sumatra. Tools found above and below the ash line left by this volcano help scientists develop theories about when the first humans traveled through Asia and what route they took.

70,00060,000 BCE

After coming close to extinction, the Homo sapiens population in Africa stabilizes and rebounds. Climate conditions affecting food and water availability prompt some humans to leave Africa and enter Asia for the first time.

55,00050,000 BCE

Homo sapiens migrate to Australia. During the last Ice Age, glaciers absorb so much sea water that humans can walk most of the way from Asia to Australia. However, they still have to navigate across 50 miles of open ocean.

52,00045,000 BCE

Homo sapiens migrate to Europe along a corridor of fertile land through the Middle East to southern Europe. There they encounter the last remaining human cousinsNeanderthal Man.

28,000 BCE

Neanderthal is extinct. Homo sapiens is the only surviving human species.

16,50013,500 BCE

Humans migrate to the Americas. For decades, scientists believed the first humans could only have reached North America on foot over the land bridge from Asia. New scientific discoveries suggest some people might have traveled by boat and arrived much earlier than scientists previously believed possible.

30001000 BCE

The Bantu-speaking people migrate across Africa. Scientists track their long, slow migration by analyzing linguistic patterns in modern languages that have their roots in Bantu.

1321948 CE

Religious intolerance repeatedly forces people of the Jewish faith out of their homelands. This scattering of the population is known as diaspora.

7931150

From their homeland in Scandinavia, Viking warriors launch raids on Western and Eastern Europe. They eventually establish trading posts and settlements in these lands.

15001850

The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in history. At least 12 million people are captured from their homelands in Africa and shipped to Europe and the Americas, where they are sold into slavery. The Indian Ocean slave trade results in the capture and shipment of 3 to 5 million East Central Africans to the Middle East and South Asia.

16071700

The British colonize the east coast of North America. The 13 colonies that the British establish eventually become the United States of America.

18151915

Millions of Europeans and thousands of Asians migrate to the United States in search of political freedom and economic opportunity.

18821943

The Chinese Exclusion Act bars most Chinese from immigrating to the United States and bans all Chinese from becoming American citizens.

19101930

Tens of thousands of African Americans move to northern states to escape racism and find better economic opportunities in a surge known as the Great Migration.

1933

Scientists discover a distinctive spearhead in Clovis, New Mexico. Similar tools found across the Americas are labeled as coming from the Clovis culture. For decades, scientists believe that the Clovis people were the first migrants into North America, but new evidence has cast doubt on that theory.

19421964

As part of the Bracero Program, 4.5 million Mexican workers come to the United States as temporary farm laborers. They are poorly paid and forced to work in dangerous conditions.

1974

Scientist Jim Bowler discovers the remains of Mungo Man in a remote corner of Australia. These bones are 42,000 years old, which indicates that humans must have developed the technology to travel by water to Australia from Asia much earlier than scientists previously thought.

2004

Scientists discover the remains of a miniature human species on the Indonesian island of Flores. Known as Homo floresiensis, these skeletons share characteristics with ancient Homo species, but are dated to 18,000 years ago. Therefore, this primitive species existed on Earth at the same time as modern humans.

2008

The global financial crisis damages the Greek economy and tens of thousands of professional Greeks emigrate to find work.

2010

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute sequence the Neanderthal genome and discover that most people today share a small percentage of DNA with Neanderthal Man.

2011

The Syrian Civil War begins. More than 10 million Syrians are displaced by this violence.

2015

The United Nations reports that there are 60 million displaced people in the world.