[Political Interest]

I am very interested in the migration of populations in pre-modern times. I like to find examples of peoples migrating from one place to another. So then I am wondering, would it have been possible for some Europeans in the 14th century to migrate across Eurasia and settle in Manchuria for example? Imagine a king in a European country sent some nobles with horses, supplies, agricultural experts, warriors, women etc and said "Go as far from here as you can". Then this group of a thousand or so would migrate east and keep going, giving birth to more children, surviving attacks of hostile peoples in the steppe, settling for a few periods to cultivate food. Eventually after about a hundred years they then arrive in Manchuria and get permission from the state in charge there to settle permanently. Then you can imagine that they would have descendants to the present day. Would such a scenario have been possible?

Something like this did happen in around the 1600s or 1700s. The Kalmyks migrated from Mongolia to the Volga and settled there. Apparently this migration took thirty two years. They went over land without using modern technology. After WWII some even apparently migrated to France. It is quite something to think that a people migrated from Mongolia to France by land...

[GandalfTheGrey]

There was a mass of migrations from asian regions during the late Roman empire period. Most famously the Huns. A little earlier than the period you are interested in. Your European scenario is a little bit like what the crusaders did in the Holy land I guess.

As an aside, Alexander the Great is an interesting case - purportedly having descendents all over the world. The Malaysian royal family claim to have descended from his family.

[Verv]

People only migrate en masse if they have to.

Otherwise, you might see a romantic like Marco Polo traversing the globe, or an Army aiming for domination...

But the Europeans would not go to Manchuria because they were generally provided for enough on that land whereas those in the stark environment of central Asia may be inclined to leave as life was harder and resources fewer, thus really making it necessary to make a move, I guess.

You really only leave if there are significant advantages elsewhere and a real belief that upon arrival you won't find yourself in conflict.

The Europeans never had enough motive or enough certainty to leave, I guess, until the great colonial period -- which has spawned many great people we all know today.

Inspirational leaders like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Stephen Harper, Hugo Chavez, Rosa Parks, Charles Manson and B. Hussein Obama are all the products of this mass migration to the West.

[ThirdTerm]

The “migration period” from the fourth through ninth centuries begins with the Huns moving into eastern Europe towards the end of the fourth century, establishing an empire including modern-day Hungary and Romania, and continues in the fifth century as various Germanic groups moved into and ruled much of the western Roman empire. This was followed by the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century, reaching their maximum by the 10th century [52]. The eastern populations with high rates of IBD (identity by descent) are highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages, so it is natural to speculate that much of the higher rates were due to this expansion. The inclusion of (non-Slavic speaking) Hungary and Romania in the group of eastern populations sharing high IBD could indicate the effect of other groups (e.g., the Huns) on ancestry in these regions, or because some of the same group of people who elsewhere are known as Slavs adopted different local cultures in those regions.

On the other hand, we find that France and the Italian and Iberian peninsulas have the lowest rates of genetic common ancestry in the last 1,500 years (other than Turkey and Cyprus), and are the regions of continental Europe thought to have been least affected by the Slavic and Hunnic migrations. These regions were, however, moved into by Germanic tribes (e.g., the Goths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals), which suggests that perhaps the Germanic migrations/invasions of these regions entailed a smaller degree of population replacement than the Slavic and/or Hunnic, or perhaps that the Germanic groups were less genealogically cohesive. This is consistent with the argument that the Slavs moved into relatively depopulated areas, while Gothic “migrations” may have been takeovers by small groups of extant populations [54],[55].

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001555?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+plosbiology%2FNewArticles+(Ambra+-+Biology+New+Articles)

[GandalfTheGrey]

well there's always the example of the American pioneers crossing to the western side of the US - before they were linked by any roads or rails.

[Political Interest]

Something very interesting are the Volga Germans who moved to the Volga region after being invited there in the 18th century. Some even went to the Caucasus. After deportation during WWII by Stalin they can now be found in Central Asia.

Another interesting example are the Albazin Cossacks who settled in China in the 1600s. Their descendants exist to this day and they still hold the Orthodox faith.

The Salar people of China possibly originated from modern day Uzbekistan. The Dongxiang are another group who quite possibly migrated into central China from Central Asia or Mongolia or both.

[Verv]

A nice, little wikipedia repost -- I enjoyed it, up there.

well there's always the example of the American pioneers crossing to the western side of the US - before they were linked by any roads or rails.

Trailblazers, indeed.

However, we must not forget that these men were nothing more than the scouts for a terrible scourge upon the native Americans.

But the native Americans, much like the Europeans, routinely scourged one another.

So it was a zero sum game.

... Except they were able to eventually get our medicine, schools & our Jesus Christ.

Something very interesting are the Volga Germans who moved to the Volga region after being invited there in the 18th century. Some even went to the Caucasus. After deportation during WWII by Stalin they can now be found in Central Asia.

There are many Volgadeutsch in North Dakota & South Dakota, USA. It is also rumored that amongst them are Russians who claim that they were Volgadeutsch in order to not be discriminated against.

[Sithsaber]

nO ONE Serious thinks the herding of the last native americans on to useless land is a net gain.

PS: Migrations were alot more common than what people used to think, and they happened due to everything from societal collapse, to invasion to "the gods have decreed for us to search for a magic cactus. Follow me."

[Tigerlily]

Moved to History.

[Verv]

nO ONE Serious thinks the herding of the last native americans on to useless land is a net gain.

Let me tell you a story...

When I was 13 or 14 I asked my friend's dad, who was a medical doctor, "If you could live in any time period, which would you live in?"

And he baffled me... He said, "Now," and I naturally retorted with "but that is so... uninteresting." And he responded that, essentially, due to modern technology our lives are exponentially superior to how they were ages ago.

I then said, "Well, sure, fine... Then, if you if you could not live in now, and had to live sometime else, when would it be?"

"As close to now as I could get."

I nearly shouted "Damn it!" because the fellow was missing the point. It is a question that was meant to measure the values and the interests one might reveal by saying a different period. But he actually made a very good point:

Things are exponentially worst without technology.

Likewise, the native Americans have benefitted exponentially from the invasion of the Europeans on a literal level. While their society was destroyed -- well, what worth is a society?

Spoiler alert:



This is how it ends.

They didn't miss much -- we, in fact, gave them the gift of being destroyed as opposed to being debauched at their own hands. A gift, indeed, as the true loser in the relationship is actually the winner.

And that is an interesting paradox.

[Sithsaber]

1. No. Technology would have come around eventually, and it's better to wait a bit and be a Vietnam than to just accept the ipod and be literally cordoned off into garbage.

2. Literally they were fucked hard by colonization. Revisionism based on "yeah well at least they have computers " is missing the point. Subjugation was inevitable at that point but its level of brutality wasn't.

[Verv]

Sith, Europeans did that stuff to each other frequently, and Native Americans did that to one another as well.

They lost. Oh well. I mean, what can you do?

Should the Europeans have turned their back on two entire continents full of resources because of an ethical dilemma?

Not to mention, the mere disease was enough to annihilate significant portions of the population.

It's a really difficult topic, Sith, but surely you believe in racial equality... They would've done it to us if they were given the option. This is just how humans must be resigned to live and operate.

Secondly...

How do you know they would have gotten to the point of developing technology anywhere at the rate of Europe? There are many geographic factors that could become quite limiting towards them and make it impossible to have the success of europe who flourished with much trade, plentiful coastline and next to other important civilizations.

[Sithsaber]

Colonization would have happened, but maybe without the whole "open genocide and herding the indians off as soon as you get closer".

[Verv]

Colonization would have happened, but maybe without the whole "open genocide and herding the indians off as soon as you get closer".

True. Things could've been different.

But they weren't. And it's rather regrettable.

What I would say: you have to look at it from the perspective of just a hard, cold, rationalist analysis on (a) white the white colonists did and (b) what any normal 16th or 17th century person would've done.

A fact: if your dad was confronted with two hot women in a parking lot who harassed him to sex them up, and he knew that your mom would never find out, etc... Would he do it? I do not think my father is as he is a very religious man... But would he have done it when he was 20? Would you have done it when you were 20? Would YOUR dad have done it when he was 20?

Well, Europe was 20, and there were two hot chicks called North & South America, and they had to break a few hearts to unlock them but there you have it.

[Sithsaber]

Don't use that as a justification for "meh, the red skins at least got civilized".

[Verv]

Don't use that as a justification for "meh, the red skins at least got civilized".

Great -- I am glad we are already on the same page, because I am not using that justification.

[Americanroyalty]

Showing your true colors Verv, like all conservatives you hate humanity and lust for an afterlife with some lamb god or another. I think it would be interesting to conduct a poll in which you ask native americans to choose between having their land back or christianity. (to defend your point I think many would take christianity, it's all they got after all)

[Sithsaber]

Okay that is an excess; one of if not the major teaching of cHRISTIANITY is unwarranted love or Hagape.

[Rilzik]

European Man Found in Ancient Chinese Tomb, Study Reveals
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... a-dna.html

Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows.

Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia.

The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found (see China map).

"The [genetic group] to which Yu Hong belongs is the first west Eurasian special lineage that has been found in the central part of ancient China," said Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory of the College of Life Science at Jilin University in Changchun, China.

Hui led the research, which will be published in the July 7 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Mixed Cultures

The tomb containing Yu Hong's remains has been undergoing excavation since 1999.

It also contains the remains of a woman of East Asian descent.

The burial style and multicolor reliefs found in the tomb are characteristic of Central Asia at the time, experts say.

The people pictured in the reliefs, however, have European traits, such as straight noses and deep-set eyes.

"The mixture of different cultures made it difficult to confirm the origin of this couple, and the anthropologists also could not determine the race of these remains, owing to the partial missing skulls," Hui said.

To learn more about the history of the couple, Hui's team studied their mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA inherited exclusively from the mother that can be analyzed to track human evolution.

The research shows that Yu Hong arrived in Taiyuan approximately 1,400 years ago and most probably married a local woman.

Carvings found in the tomb depict scenes from his life, showing him to have been a chieftain of the Central Asian people who had settled in China during the Sui dynasty (A.D. 580 to 618).

The carvings suggest that his grandfather and father lived in northwest China's Xinjiang region and were nobles of the Yu country for which he is named.

Yu Hong died in A.D. 592, at the age of 59. His wife, who died in A.D. 598, was buried in the same grave.

Ancient Gene Flow

Scientists are using DNA to reconstruct ancient population movements in Asia and to determine when Europeans arrived there.

"The existence of European lineages in China was already known to us, but these lineages are mainly concentrated in Xinjiang province," Hui said.

"In the central part of China, west-Eurasian lineages are seldom found in modern populations and have never been found in an ancient individual."

Austin Hughes is an expert in molecular evolution at the University of South Carolina.

The discovery in China, he said, "shows that there has always been gene flow between human populations."

"I think it's possible that these types of genetic studies can give a clearer picture of human movements and human gene flow," Hughes added.

The DNA studies can also shed light on marriage patterns, said Frederika Kaestle of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington.

"In many cases there are no other methods that allow us to gain access to information on geographic origin or relatedness of individuals in archaeological contexts," Kaestle said.

However, she added, it is impossible to draw conclusions about population movement into the region based on this one DNA sample.

"Was it just this one man [who moved into the area], or was it a large family including this man, or was it an even larger group of people from his ancestral population?" she asked.

Overall, she said, "the study of ancient mitochondrial DNA, as well as other genomic variations, holds great promise for enhancing our understanding of human prehistory."

"This is a nice example of how genetic and archaeological approaches can be combined fruitfully."

I couldn't find it but I remember reading about a town in China where people have European characteristics.

Edit: I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies

The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to 200 CE.[1][2] The mummies, particularly the early ones, are frequently associated with the presence of the Indo-European Tocharian languages in the Tarim Basin,[3] although the evidence is not totally conclusive and many centuries separate these mummies from the first attestation of the Tocharian languages in writing. Victor H. Mair's team concluded that the mummies are basically Europoid, likely speakers of Indo-European languages.

Notable mummies are the tall, red-haired "Chärchän man" or the "Ur-David" (1000 BCE); his son (1000 BCE), a small 1-year-old baby with brown hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, with two stones positioned over its eyes; the "Hami Mummy" (c. 1400–800 BCE), a "red-headed beauty" found in Qizilchoqa; and the "Witches of Subeshi" (4th or 3rd century BCE), who wore 2-foot-long (0.61 m) black felt conical hats with a flat brim.[6] Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of a surgical operation on his neck; the incision is sewn up with sutures made of horsehair.[7]

The Taklamakan Desert is very dry, which helped considerably in the preservation of the mummies.
Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert and the desiccation it produced in the corpses. The mummies share many typical Europoid body features (elongated bodies, angular faces, recessed eyes), and many of them have their hair physically intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided.

[Figlio di Moros]

I'm not sure why this is a suprise, Asians either evolved from Caucasians or a common ancestor; certainly Xiajang was Caucasian until the last thousand or so years, and still has very caucasoid features.