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human migration
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A long line of several thousand migrants, including families with children, walk along a grassy path in Slovenia toward Germany on a sunny day. Swedish immigrants en route to the western United States, mid-19th century Naturalization World map showing major routes of early human migration out of Africa and across the globe, with orange arrows indicating movement paths and blue boxes marking estimated time periods in years ago for each migration wave into regions such as Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. World map tracing the migration routes of Homo sapiens between 61,000 and 25,000 years ago, using colored arrows to indicate the paths of different mitochondrial DNA haplogroups as humans dispersed from Africa into Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Each route is labeled with a haplogroup letter and approximate time in thousands of years, showing major movements into all inhabited continents except Antarctica. World map showing the migration routes of Homo sapiens over the past 25,000 years, traced by mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. Colored lines represent different haplogroups, with arrows indicating movement from Africa and Eurasia into Europe, Asia, North America, and South America. A legend identifies haplogroups C, D, I, K, T, V, and W, along with approximate timing in thousands of years. World map showing migration routes of Native Americans from northeastern Asia across the Bering land bridge into North America and then southward through the Americas. Purple shading marks areas covered by glacial ice during the Pleistocene, and red dots indicate late Pleistocene Paleoindian archaeological sites in Siberia, Alaska, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America.
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human migration: References & Edit History

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  • The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
    Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.

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Article History

Type Description Contributor Date
Add new Web site: Social Sciences LibreTexts - The Global Impact of Human Migration. Jul 21, 2026
Add new Web site: Cell Press - Current Biology - Historical human migrations: From the steppe to the basin. May 25, 2026
Add new Web site: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - Immigration and Migration. May 22, 2026
Add new Web site: Salt Lake Community College - Introduction to Human Geography - Population and Migration. Mar 13, 2026
Add new Web site: Khan Academy - Causes and effects of human migration. Feb 12, 2026
Add new Web site: Nature Human Behaviour - World’s human migration patterns in 2000–2019 unveiled by high-resolution data. Dec 30, 2025
Add new Web site: OpenStax - World History Volume 1, to 1500 - Early Human Evolution and Migration. Nov 21, 2025
Add new Web site: National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - A Critical Analysis of the Drivers of Human Migration Patterns in the Presence of Climate Change: A New Conceptual Model. Aug 29, 2025
Add new Web site: BMC Biology - A question of scale: Human migrations writ large and small. Jun 17, 2025
Add new Web site: National Bureau of Economic Research - The Costs and Returns of Human Migration. Sep 14, 2024
Add new Web site: Frontiers - Scientific debate on human migration: ethics, challenges, and solutions. May 08, 2024
Add new Web site: Princeton University - Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment - Human Migration. Jul 28, 2023
Add new Web site: OpenStax - World History Volume 1, to 1500 - Early Human Evolution and Migration. Apr 07, 2023
Add new Web site: World History Encyclopedia - Early Human Migration. Oct 23, 2022
Add new Web site: Khan Academy - Causes and effects of human migration. Apr 19, 2022
Add new Web site: Council on Foreign Relations - Why Are People Fleeing the Northern Triangle? Aug 31, 2021
Add new Web site: Princeton University - C-PREE - Human Migration. Mar 24, 2021
Added mention of refugees from Syria. May 19, 2020
Add new Web site: BBC - How Britain and Poland Came to Be Intertwined. Apr 23, 2020
Add new Web site: National Geographic - Introduction to Human Migration. Jul 27, 2016
Added new Web site: How Stuff Works - Science - How Human Migration Works. Feb 09, 2009
Article revised and updated. Apr 24, 2008
Added new Web site: The Catholic Encyclopedia - Migration.
  • Gaurav Shukla
 Jun 07, 2007
Article added to new online database. Jul 20, 1998
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