Exploration ... an Advanced Form of Migration

At this point in time the explorations leading to discovering the New World (the Americas) is just a small ray of light on the horizon of time. Lief Ericson may have been the first to arrive in North America, certainly others would follow. Here is another place to think about future transitions, future driving forces for change, and the accelerating trends behind a material preoccupation and anthropocentric view of life on earth.

While you may think of the wooden sailing ships leaving Europe to span the globe as nothing more than topics covered in elementary school social studies, therein lies the seed of future global change of much larger proportions. Without going into extensive detail, let's just observe that humans have made many forms of migration around the globe. This includes the early migration of humans from northeastern Asia into northwestern North America... leading to a ''peopling'' of the Western Hemisphere — giving us the 'native' Americans.

Early groups on all continents would exhibit some tendency to reside in a location and if resources, food, fuel sources, etc., were diminished by use, then human groups such as tribes or clans would migrate to other resource rich areas. Improvements in transporting goods from distant locations made for more permanent dwelling locations, but migration from place to place was still possible.

But as the world at large experienced the exploration and ''re-peopling'' by ''civilized societies'' over the foundation of the more ''primitive societies,'' the migration pattern take on a new twist. Arguably, the Incas and Mayans or other groups exhibited a level of sophistication that is not to be under rated... yet the Spanish, Portuguese, English, and other explorations were a form of New World migration. They arrived in the Western Hemisphere for a variety of reasons, but in time this form of migration was part of an upturn leading to increased global change... change in population, resource use, technology advancement, and much more. This is indicative of a momentum that is building even from the first inkling of exploration activities at this time.

Today humans span the entire globe... space and resources are dwindling... global change is taking a hold... where do we migrate to now?

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