I read a few articles where some of these civilizations main focus was keeping warm because they were located so far north. So why would they not migrate more south?
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They didn’t really know that there was anything else. For all they knew, it was the same further north, south, ot east.
They didn’t know it was warmer south. They knew how to live where they were, how to get all the resources they needed to survive where they were.
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It’s a function of power. More powerful groups occupied better regions. Less powerful groups were pushed to the less hospitable regions. After a time cultures developed allowing the survival in certain inhospitable regions.
One had to be careful not to stray too far outside your territory since there was a good chance those folks would kill you if they found you.
That’s where their lives were.
Why don’t YOU move hundreds of miles away from your home for no reason?
Because that’s not where your life is.
These people weren’t stupid.
They knew the climate was different from place to place.
They knew other cultures existed and thrived in different climates. They traded and interacted with neighboring cultures.
Hunter-gatherer tribes in far northern climates could get to those other climates if they wanted to. They traveled over a wide area — they had to, to find the resources to survive in that environment.
And throughout history, many hunter-gatherer civilizations *have* migrated from place to place, and it’s been possible in many cases for individuals to emigrate from one hunter-gatherer culture into another.
So why didn’t everybody leave?
Because they were surviving where they were, and some people liked their life the way it was.
In practice, they did migrate southwards. The entire human settlement of the North and South Americas region was through ongoing migration over thousands of years. But simply put – as some people explored and moved, some chose to stay where they were. Presumably the difference between individuals and tribes/clans responding to their specific environmental and societal circumstances at the time.
Because moving is a lot harder than just adapting these civilizations had infrastructure knowledge of landmarks and rivers and just a better understanding of the flora and fauna in the area a lot of ppl didn’t want to just upend there lives and risk death for the small possibility of fortune when the resources and risk weren’t really worth it also if they did find an empty region nearby there was probably a good reason it was empty from other residents to dangerous predators/flora/weather also the logistics of a mass move would be horrifying to an old world ruler who couldn’t just email a go to plan or easily guide their ppl on such a vast journey to uncharted areas than there’s the nightmare of rebuilding all that necessary infrastructure from temples “hospitals”(or whatever was close for one) defenses of some kind farms or even designated waste and reliving areas literally think back to the trail of tears though the move was by force the act of marching there killed 1,000s and many more died on arrival as they had to completely reestablish themselves with minimal resources so yeah individuals may have left but any sort of mass move was functionally impossible without a couple 100 dying on the way
It’s a matter of specialization.
In nature, there’s a concept called “niche partitioning”. If two species are competing for the same resources (food, living space, etc). There are ultimately 2 outcomes:
1) One of the creatures gets progressively better than the other, outcompeting them to extinction.
2) Both creatures specialise into different areas, allowing them to live without having to compete against eachother as much, if at all.
A similar situation can be seen in cultures.
War between different groups was common in the Americas, even before European settlement, and understandably so.
If you’re a hunter-gatherer society, and your population is growing, you are going to need more land to hunt in, and you hunting there means others can’t. (This is a concept known as scarcity)
Since humans are always the most dangerous predator around, and niceties are only afforded when survival isn’t an issue, other people are always a significant problem.
Cultures like the Inuit survived because they understood this, and decided that they’d learn to follow the food, wherever it may be.
There was a choice: Either fight others to maintain hunting territory, or go somewhere that no one wanted to hunt in. They chose the latter, and went further North. They learned how to survive up there when others didn’t care to try, and they were lucky enough to succeed.
They did migrate. Many people leave a rough neighborhood if they can. But some people can’t afford it (that is, they cannot compete with the people in nicer areas). And some people are actually just fine, and even though they know it’s a tough life, the thought of changing their ways, leaving their friends and family, etc is even worse.
The way south may not have been obvious. Groups that migrated across Beringia into the rest of North America almost certainly came down the Pacific coast, a relatively temperate strip. The path they took is almost certainly under water now. Once you are past the Pacific coast, they way South is very very rough, and maybe even worse when the glacial retreat was more recent. Nor would it have been obvious that if you “pushed through” you’d find milk and honey on the other side.
There was apparently some communication: experts seem confident that bow and arrow technology was introduced from Asia and went south. But their were clearly significant physical barriers to cultural diffusion.
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