Modern science is proving conclusively that the story of human history shows for thousands of years it has been the natural course for humans to “move and mix.”
In past millenniums when humans lived in a direct relationship with nature, whether a nomadic hunter/gatherer tribe or a more settled farming tribe, even the smallest variation in weather could make the difference between prosperity and starvation.
A month of hot, dry weather could force game to migrate or die out, forcing the humans that depended on them to do the same. A week of bad weather at harvest time meant farming people would starve during the winter.
From roughly 800-1300 A.D., a minor warming period brought favorable conditions for stable agriculture and learning to Europe. That same minor climate change that so benefited Europe created severe, prolonged drought conditions in North America, bringing to an end the Pueblo culture in what is now the southwestern United States and the Mayan culture in what is now Mexico.
All life needs water, and we still have no real answer for drought. As in the past, humans will respond to drought by moving and also as in the past humans moving into territory already occupied by other humans will create conflict. There being billions more people today, those future conflicts will be massive.
Along with a change in climate, war and famine have also spurred past mass migrations. From 1845 to 1852, Ireland was struck with a spore-borne plant disease, blighting and destroying the potato crops. Millions starved to death (estimated 400,000 in 1847) or emigrated. Over a million went to America, where they were violently scorned by anti-immigrant groups like the Know Nothings.
Many were unaccompanied children whose entire families had already perished. If there was “documentation” it was often a note pinned or sewn inside their coat or sweater stating their name and sometimes, if it was known, the town or county they came from.
Known to history as the Irish potato famine, as usual it was a famine created by brutal class politics. Potatoes were virtually the only food the native Irish peasants were allowed to eat by their mostly absentee English landlords.
At the same time, while potato plants were withering and dying, Ireland was producing fine crops of grain, fruit and vegetables along with dairy and meat products. What they didn’t consume themselves, English landlords and the complicit Irish gentry that ruled Ireland exported for profit past the outstretched hands of starving peasants.
The real scarcity wasn’t potatoes. The real scarcity was mercy and kindness. Little wonder it created such enduring animosity. Central American gangs like MS-13 could probably learn a thing or two about homicidal violence from the 19th century Irish street gangs of New York and Boston, but over time the contribution made to America by those starving Irish refugees and their descendants has been enormous.
We would all do well to remember some words of one of those optimistic descendants, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, spoken in what now seems like the very long ago summer of 1963. “We all cherish our children’s future and we are all mortal.”
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
