(no subject)

[mamculuna]

Here's an amazing (to me) animation of human migrations over the last 160,000 years. I knew the general outlines, but these details are very interesting:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yeah--doesn't show when they got to NZ, though--must have been a later migration from somewhere. Do you know when people first got there?

[angels-nibblet.livejournal.com]

That's quite strongly debated - the earliest date is usually about 1000 years ago (something to do with a type of rat that lives here that got here somehow at that time) and the most recent is about 400 or 500 years, I think.

Either way, NZ was really one of the last places in the world to be settled, probably due to the distance and the fact that it broke away from the original land mass quite soon (which is why we have almost no native mammals).

But looking at that animation, it's amazing to see how far the human race has come and how much we've managed to survive. Say what you like about us, we're a tenacious lot!