Thursday, August 21, 2014

What Does Migration Mean?

Directions: Read the following article and answer the two question that follow (in complete sentences) in the comment section.

What does Migration Mean?
Migrations are permanent moves to new locations that have occurred on local, regional, and global levels. There are countless reasons why people voluntarily migrate, but most of them are economic. A push factor encourages people to move from the region that they live in, and a pull factor attracts them to a new region. For example, push factors force refugees to migrate from their homes because of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, or political opinions. Pull factors for these refugees may bring them to an area that has better jobs and a more democratic government. Environmental factors influence migrations greatly, sometimes as intervening obstacles, or physical features that halt or slow migration from one place to another. Over time, these obstacles may have different meanings: an ocean that separated lands no longer prevents migrations once the technology to cross the ocean develops.
With population movement, people spread their cultures to new areas through a process called cultural diffusion, including innovations, technology, religion, language, food and clothing styles, and disease. Throughout history diseases have spread as human interactions have increased: Famous examples include the 14th century plague that spread from Asia to Europe, and the contagious diseases that spread rapidly through the Native American populations that came into contact with Europeans in the New World during the 15th and 16th centuries. During prehistoric times, human beings migrated to many parts of the globe, setting the stage for human domination of other species on earth. Although we cannot pin these prehistoric migrations to a single "marker event" because they took place gradually over long periods of time, without them humans might not have survived those early years.

Question 1: Define Migrations and Explain why people move from region to region?

 Question 2: What is cultural diffusion?  Provide a modern example!


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