Why Do People Move

A few days ago, Halloween actually so it was Monday, in history class we were asked the question, why do people move. We were told to write about this question for a few minutes and after we wrote down our thoughts, we discussed the question as a class. The question of why people move came up because we were discussing a reading that we recently finished about the Bantu language and migration. The Bantu people started out in modern day Nigeria but by the time their civilization ended, they were all the way down to South Africa. I thought that this was very interesting especially because their language for the most part remained even thought there were several different forms of it by the end of the their civilization. And also they had no idea where they were going, they just knew where they were, were they came directly from and that they needed to move. When we saw the map of their migration, they branched of from each other a few times but every single stopping place was at a water source. It would be really hard for them because they had no idea where they were going and they needed water and because they didn't know where they were going they didn't know if they would survive or when they would find water again. We talked about something called push/pull. This was explained as the push is the conditions that drive people out of their homes. And the pull if the part that causes and brings people to explore new areas. Since the Bantu people migrated so many times, they probably came across other civilizations. Since the Bantu people stayed intact until the reaches South Africa, this obviously means that all of the civilizations that they came across they defeated and the civilization joined them. The process of Diffusion is also something that was brought up. Diffusion is when societies are given the opportunity to pick and choose different aspects of many societies to make their own, greater society.

This is the response I came up with to the question:

 One reason that people may move is because their current location has a lack of sustainable resources. This can be a huge problem because without water and food, people can not survive. Another reason similar to the first is that they exhausted their resources. This is a more likely reason for people to move away because chances are if a place didn't have any access to food or water, they wouldn't have even chosen this location in the the first place. People might also be forced to move away because other civilizations or groups might defeat them. Also they might move because they think that another location will give them better opportunities for success in their life and career or if they are experiencing intolerance from other people. People also might move because they want to be closer to their family or maybe there is a famine that could drive them out of their current location. There are many reason that people might might move, they can choose to or they also might be forced to. Everyone has their reason and unless it was documented, it can be really hard to tell why they move.