Amanuel Beyin
Assistant Professor (Anthropology)
"If there is any lesson we can learn from our evolutionary history, it is the recognition that migration has played a vital role in shaping mankind’s destiny by facilitating population interactions, cultural diversity and the emergence of new genetic make-up."
From an anthropological stand point, all modern humans share a recent common ancestor that once lived only in the African continent. This means, the story of mankind started in Africa and at some point in time all humans were emigrants, except, perhaps those groups that stayed in Africa.
Throughout mankind’s history, migration or dispersal has remained the single greatest force responsible for moving people, genes, ideas, beliefs, customs, technological innovations, and languages across regions. While expanding their geographic horizon, humans have created new survival opportunities, interbred and influenced one another, developed new languages and skill-sets, and were exposed to new kinds of pathogens. Such encounters and their perilous voyages across regions have taught humans a great deal about the rules of nature and compelled them to be more creative and adaptive. As a result, today, humans are not only the sole conquerors of the world, but the possibility of spreading to other planets seems on the horizon. How will that transform us in the long-term is unclear.
The drive for migration is part and parcel of our evolutionary legacy. It was one way through which our ancestors created new survival opportunities. In the course of human evolution, every time our forbearers faced survival adversities, they were often left with two choices- adapt to their surrounding (by developing new biological traits or by coming up with cultural solutions to the problem) or migrate to new habitats in search of better niches. If neither was executed successfully, extinction would have been the inevitable fate. The same survival instinct is driving migration in many parts of the world today.
We live in a world, where on the one hand there is a growing realization of the importance of diversity and inclusion, and on other hand words such as immigrants and refugees are becoming causes for toxic conversations. If there is any lesson we can learn from our evolutionary history, it is the recognition that migration has played a vital role in shaping mankind’s destiny by facilitating population interactions, cultural diversity and the emergence of new genetic make-up. Mankind badly needs these qualities.
Without diversity (be it genetic or cultural), we have limited creative capacity. Societies that are welcome to immigrants are well positioned to benefit from the valuable cultural experiences and genetic variants that the migrants bring with them."
