This is not about promoting migration.  Instead, this is about migration as explanation for the spread of agriculture.  Historically this idea has been associated with racism.  A pre-existing population was supposed not to be capable of becoming farmers themselves.  However, there is another explanation which does not require such prejudices.  I will explain it based on agriculture’s consequences.

Agriculture is now thought to have been developed in eight or nine areas of the world:

1. Horn of Africa

2. West Africa

3. West Asia

4. New Guinea

5. Eastern China

6. Mesoamerica

7. Eastern US

8. Northern Andes

Possibly there may have been a ninth consisting of the Amazon.  This depend on if the eighth area was among the hills east of the Andeans or in the mountains themselves.  In the latter case a separate origin in the lowland is required.  The differences in climate between the highland and the lowland are too large.  This is also the reason I think there are two origins in Africa.

Anyhow, there were areas where precursors of agriculture appeared beneficial.  This started a development leading to dependence of agriculture.  This development took anything from a few hundred to up to 2,000 years.  That means those participating in it could not see its consequences.  That their descendants would get a worse life, they as such had no idea of.

Before the development of agriculture people ate louds of different species.  There was almost always plenty of something which you ate regularly.  When people got dependant on agriculture, they also got dependant on a small number of species.  This multiplied the risk of starvation.  A sufficient harvest of those could simply not be presupposed.  (This was only made possible by the Industrialisation.)  At least in Eurasia new infections also arose.  Both resulted in an increase of childhood mortality.  On the other hand, birth rates increased to an even higher degree.  This led to a population growth which was slow and intermittent.

The population growth led to descendants of the world’s first farmers starting to spread out.  How do you think a foraging people would perceive the new way of life?  Your new neighbours work considerably more than you are used to.  Yet they run multiplied the risk of starvation.  Why would you want to adopt their lifestyle?  Presumably, this was as rare as the Swiss woman who fell in love with a Loikop.  Like her one can also imagine the person running away with their child(ren).

It was not always like a pre-existing population were forced away by the farmers.  In some cases, they made agreements where the land was divided.  But continued population growth among farmers made this system unsustainable.  When foragers could no longer sustain themselves on the land left for them the descendants of the farmers were many times more numerous.  This way the descendants of the world’s first farmers have dominated.  Of cause, they did not take over everywhere for purely practical reasons.  The crops available could not grow everywhere.  The climate could be too cold or too dry for the crops.  The differences between summer and winter rain climate also consisted a barrier.  Some crops can be made to grow in both types of climate.  However, you can’t presuppose this to apply to all plants.

 

Uploaded on the 24th of Mars 2023.