Continents Influenced Ancient Human Migration, Spread of Technology

Researchers at Brown examined migration patterns across Eurasia and the Americas, trying to determine how population mixing varied between the two. It was known that in Eurasia, people tended to move in an east-west manner, taking advantage of the fact that climates are very similar as they moved laterally. However, the Americas are arranged in a more north-south orientation, spanning many climates from top to bottom. As suspected, this configuration appears to have limited migration and inter-group dynamics, as it was discovered that genes of isolated populations in the Americas varied more than those in Europe. It is thought that migrations occurred less in the Americas because it is more difficult to transverse different climates than to move along a temperature band.