Human History as Biological Event

[Pavlov's House Party]

Just something I've been thinking about recently, but if we remove history from ideological and political thought it could be possible to see human history as the biological (perhaps this isn't the correct word) movement of our species. For example, when we talk about humans in pre-history we use words like "migration" or "displacement" that we associate with other species, but as soon as states and political organization pops up, there seems to be a completely different perspective on history where we use terms like "invasion" and "subjugation" that we would never use when describing other animals, when the humans who "migrated" a few thousand years ago are biologically the same ones who "conquered" other lands later on.


An example of this that I've been thinking about would be how we compare the "migration" of homo-sapiens-sapiens into Eurasia, and the "displacement" of Neanderthals compared to the invasion of the Americas by Europeans and their subjugation of the Native population. Is it correct to view this as simply another migration of a human population to another place and its inevitable consequences or as a political event?


(Just to make it clear, I'm not advocating genocide or anything... this is just a little thought experiment I've been having the past few days.)

[¿Que?]

I think you make an interesting point, but what do animals specifically have to do with biology that excludes the realm of human social organization. Aren't humans biological too? Can't animals be social?

[Jimmie Higgins]

"Migration" is still used to describe non-organized movements of people like "migration of peasants to urban areas" or "migrant workers". Invasion is an organized attempt to take land - if people are living nomadically, they have no land to take: any battles that might have happened would be over water sources or hunting ranges or something.

We don't know exactly what the interaction was when early homo-sapiens met other human species, except that they seemed to have some kind of contact. It is not clear if the Neanderthals were displaced due to any homo-sapien contact, I don't think there is much evidence to prove that. But migration of these early people would not have been an organized event, just a trend over decades or centuries. In North America, on the other hand, the migration into native areas was organized - it was even done "legally" with contracts and so on. For the most part migrants were moving onto land "owned" or controlled by the US government and then displacing the native populations.