Migration
Patterns are as interesting as genealogy lineages. They actually can hold the
key to resolving some genealogical questions. They definitely can help steer
you to the data you may need to look at when a family becomes missing or a
person has gone away.
A great visual of the potential routes used, that DNA is tending to prove out.
Out of Africa then migrating across the world.
Purported
to have started about a million years ago, moving out of Africa 80 millennia
ago, and spread across Eurasia and to Australia before 40 millennia ago. The
Americas migration took place about 20 to 15 millennia ago and then the Pacific
Islands around 2 millennia ago.
The
Indo-European came at the end of the Neolithic Period. The language is believed to have
originated north of the Black Sea (Ukraine and Southern Russia). Then spreading
their language to Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia, (Iran) and South Asia.
I am
using languages because it represents peoples.
Sami (Laplanders) are genetically
different and encompass northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola
Peninsula of Russia.
Sami peoples have inhabited the northern
regions of Scandinavia for thousands of years.
These
peoples were seriously affected by the Ice Age and cut off from others for long
period of time (is the theory). They lived along the southern shores of Lake
Aaninen and Lake Ladoga in Russia,
reaching the River Utsjoki, modern border between Russia and Norway, as early
as 8100 B.C. . . After this the West
European came into their region.
With the basics set, here is a brief up to 1600’s in the
USA.
Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age
Maps on
the site can assist in understanding their movement.
Africa
of today's movements early are depicted on these sites.
400
ethnic groups of Bantu peoples
The
Sahara starts drying up and migration pushes peoples into the southern region
of Africa. Bringing them to what they have today as they moved about.
Next
was the Early Iron Age, between 12th and 9th centuries B.
C. E., little is known but major
movements were happening.
The
Great Migrations Periods
This area covers much for us doing research today and Y and mt DNA.
Quickly moving along we are now into an era we can find
records for doing research in Europe.
It was called the Medieval Period.
Our ethnicity has a lot to do with this time period and the cultures of
today.
Late
Middle Ages brought the BLACK DEATH one of the most lethal pandemics in human
history struck Europe in 1340's. It reduced the population by 1/3 to ½ across
the continent.
Not
being eradicated until the beginning of the 19th Century in Europe, but is prevalent
even yet in the Americas and other areas.
Early
Modern Europe
Major
migration within Europe started:
Protestants from Spanish Netherlands to Dutch Republic after 1580's, expelling
of Jews and Moriscos from Spain in
the 1590's and the removal of Huguenots from France in the 1680's.
The Serbs were welcomed by the Habsburg Monarchs, also
offered land and freedom for service in Habsburg army. The Serbs shared space
with the Turks there. The two
greatest migrations took place in 1690 and 1737.
Plantations
of Ireland settled with Protestant English colonists during 1560-1690.
Germans
were recruited by Catherine the Great of Russia to settle the Volga region in
the 1800 century.
As we
know the Americas where settled by refugees in search of freedom, the want of
land and a different way of life, creating the colonization of the early
eastern seaboard region by France, Netherlands, England and Spain.
