i. Ancient migrations encompassed relatively small numbers, but they were extremely important in the development and spread of civilisation. Greek colonisation resulted in the gradual extension of their people and their culture throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Near East;
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ii. During the early Middle Ages (A.D. 200 to 800) the Germanic people of northern Europe began a series of great migrations that took them to almost all parts of western Europe as well as a portion of North Africa.
Wave after wave of Asiatic people entered Europe from the east during the first fifteen centuries of the Christian (A.D.) era.
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This great movement of Asians displaced large numbers of earlier European cultures, causing the relocation of people in a kind of chain-reaction series of migrations.
iii. In the process, noConly people but also cultural concepts and practices diffused throughout what later Europeans referred to as the “known world.”
iv. Regardless of the importance of the cultural impact that resulted from these smaller, early movements, the migration of great number of people is a more recent phenomenon.
This great transfer of humanity from one portion of the globe to another intensified with time; between 1820 and 1980. More than 50 million migrants entered the United States alone.
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In addition, some 6 million migrants entered Brazil, 4 million became permanent residents of Argentina, and over 1.5 million came to Cuba and nearly a million to Uruguay during the same time period.
While the cases mentioned are predominantly associated with the colonization of new agricultural areas or the supply of labour to the (then) emerging industrial states.
Countless millions of other Europeans and Asians have migrated within or between the countries of those continents because of changes in political borders or governments and the destruction wrought by civil and international wars.