First Migrants

How Our Restless Ancestors Shaped the Interconnected World We Live in Today

First Migrants Revisited: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective reveals how human and hominin migrations over the past five million years shaped the world we inhabit today. Peter Bellwood synthesises insights from archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics, and linguistics to trace humanity’s earliest movements — from the first African expansions to the global spread of agriculture. The book reveals how migration redistributed the results of biological and cultural evolution, transforming societies and environments in every corner of the globe.

Bringing together decades of scholarship, Bellwood challenges simplistic narratives of ancient migration as random events without cause or consequence, instead positioning it as a powerful mechanism the behind the formation and spread of new patterns in human biology and culture. Through rich interdisciplinary analysis, he shows how the permanent movements of populations created enduring patterns of genetic, linguistic, and cultural diversity that continue to define us. Covering the migrations of early hominins, Homo sapiens dispersals across continents, and the global diffusion of agriculture, the book provides a richly interdisciplinary account of humanity’s shared past, drawing clear connections between environmental change, demographic expansion, and the human impulse to explore.

Deepening our understanding of migration as one of the most enduring forces in human history, First Migrants Revisited:

• Reinterprets migration as a dynamic process of redistribution of human biology, culture, and language
• Highlights the enduring consequences of prehistoric migration for contemporary human societies
• Provides new insights into the large-scale population movements that shaped the genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity that still characterizes humanity today
• Features accessible summaries of the latest findings on early Homo sapiens dispersals and the global spread of agriculture
• Includes comparative discussions of different hominin species and their adaptive strategies

First Migrants Revisited: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective is ideally suited for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate courses in archaeology, anthropology, human evolution, and historical linguistics, as well as for modules in global history, evolutionary biology, and population genetics within BA, BSc, and MA degree programmes.

PETER BELLWOOD is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. An International Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he is internationally recognised for his research on human population history in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. His previous publications with Wiley Blackwell include First Farmers, First Migrants, First Islanders, and The Global Prehistory of Human Migration. In 2021, he was awarded the International Cosmos Prize in Osaka, Japan.