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I’m Grant Symons. I convene Transition Edge to help us understand how we can transition to a low carbon sustainable world using leading thinking and practices.

We first started migrating from Northeastern Africa some 2 million years ago. Our distant ancestors moved out in waves across the continents as they evolved, migrating continuously and adapting to new environments over the millennia. 

At the end of the ice age, some 18,000 years ago, they migrated from East Asia and into the Americas as the glaciers retreated - all without iPhone's, MacDonalds and SUV's. During that period coastal populations were disrupted by a rise in sea level of some 120m and some were cut off as land bridges disappeared. For example, the Bass and Torres straits appeared, causing changes in human activity and distribution in Australia. In New Zealand, what was one land mass became two islands at that time.

Aboriginal intergenerational stories describe a constant retreat inland while the sea rose about 1 meter per year for over 100 years.

Aboriginal people had arrived on the Australian continent some 30,00 years prior to the end of the ice age and it is thought that they had left Africa and followed the Indian coast, then through what is now southern Asia and the Malaysian peninsula. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, they must have been on the move, drawn by what? Necessity, curiosity or just wandering aimlessly?  

The need to migrate still exists today as it has through the millennia, whether it was 5000BC, 250AD, 1450, 1840 or post WW2, when many people moved away from war ravaged Europe in search of a new and better life.

Mass organised migration ramped up with the advent of large sailing ships, followed latterly by steamers and modern-day ocean-going vessels. The slave trade was in full swing by the 16th century and a driving force because labour was needed and worth something, so slaves became forced migrants that often died en route to a faraway land. 

As Europe's population expanded and quality of life suffered there, through the 1500's to 1800's, the newly discovered and distant lands that promised better lives and perhaps riches, provided the motivation to migrate. According to Wikipedia 60-65 million people left Europe between 1500 and mid-20th centuries. With them they took their language, cultures, religions, capital, knowhow, technology, plants and animals.

For most it was an escape from war, poverty or hardship, an exciting gamble, or an opportunity to prosper further than they could in their homeland - perhaps a combination of many things.