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Rated 5 out of 5 by the professor from The Human Migration Journey Gaia Vince's work on migration and the human journey is deeply insightful and grounded in firsthand experience. Over 12 - 30 minute lectures Gaia explores how climate change is reshaping human migration patterns and argues that planned migration is essential for global stability. This writer was greatly touched by Gaia's approach to the Human Journey and migration because she doesn't just analyze data from afar as she spent 800 days traveling to witness migration firsthand, making her perspective more experiential than purely academic. She presents migration as a natural part of human history, rather than something to be feared or resisted. Her argument that we are all migrants challenge the idea that migration is an anomaly; instead, she frames it as a fundamental part of human existence. Her observations about climate change driving migration are particularly compelling. She describes how rising temperatures, droughts, floods, and wildfires are making parts of the world uninhabitable, forcing people to move to more temperate latitudes. She argues that rather resisting this inevitable shift, societies should plan for it in a way that benefits both migrants and host countries. I was deeply touched by Gaia's ability to humanize migration and the human journey, and the struggles of displaced people. This is a powerful lecture set. I have enjoyed over 1100 The Great Courses lecture sets since 2002, and none has had an impact as 'The Human Journey' has. I very highly recommend this course and Gaia Vince and look forward to her future courses.

Date published: 2025-05-26

Rated 4 out of 5 by JRC2018 from A small part of what happened. This course is an interesting addition to our knowledge but fails to understand where and why the modern world arose. Migration had little to do with it. Certainly migration led to human expansion as this course demonstrates. It also fails to understand that while migration was once essential to flourishing, it is now an impediment to it. Instead we should live in a world where good ideas migrate and people essentially remain put. There is no reason for any part of the world to import individuals so as to increase the standard of living. This does not mean that people shouldn’t relocate for personal improvement/flourishing, it just means that the personal relocation should be desired by both the person relocating and those where the relocation is taking place. There are no empty areas of the world.

Date published: 2025-05-25

Trailer

01: The Migrating Ape

Humans are not a stay-at-home species. While our ape cousins remain confined to the tropical forests they have inhabited for millions of years, we have spread across the globe. What makes us such successful migrants? Begin your exploration of the key factors that let us adapt to diverse landscapes, climates, food sources, and other challenges—allowing us to outcompete all rivals.

25 min

02: Why Cooperation Is the Key to Our Success

As resourceful as humans are, we can’t survive alone. Cooperation is the key to success under new conditions. Consider the cautionary tale of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, which set out to explore interior Australia in the mid-1800s. Despite being exceptionally well-equipped, the mission ended in disaster—largely because its leaders ignored Aboriginal knowledge of the environment.

29 min

03: Moving Ourselves and Our Tools

Explore two innovations that fundamentally shaped our species. Fire—and its use for cooking—provided access to calorie-rich, easily digestible food, dramatically reducing the time needed for foraging. Carrying technology, from bags and baskets to water skins, allowed us to transport tools and essentials—an ability unique among animals. Both fueled a hunting lifestyle that drove human expansion.

28 min

04: How We Invented Valuables to Exchange

Discover how trade supercharged human migration and laid the groundwork for complex societies. Early groups exchanged surplus goods with their neighbors in mutually beneficial swaps. Before long, highly valued personal adornments—like beads and jewels—entered the mix, giving rise to a market for inessential but beautiful objects that functioned as an early form of money.

34 min

05: Moving Out of Africa and across the Globe

Trace the great migration of our ancestors across the globe, starting with Homo erectus, who ventured out of Africa some 1.9 million years ago. Homo sapiens followed about 80,000 years ago, mixing with other hominin populations, notably Neanderthals and Denisovans. Around 20,000 years ago, humans crossed into the Americas, populating the continents in several waves during the last glacial period.

32 min

06: From Hunting and Gathering to Growing Food

If humans are born to migrate, what compelled our ancestors to settle down roughly 12,000 years ago? Investigate the origins of agriculture and why this comparatively unhealthy, labor-intensive practice took off. Was farming such a good idea that it persuaded mobile foragers to change their ways, or did early farmers themselves push outward, claiming new land and transforming the world?

34 min

07: How Migration Changed Our Genes and Cultures

Modern Europeans descend from three genetically distinct ancient populations: pre-Ice Age hunter-gatherers, early farmers from the Middle East, and a later-arriving group of steppe herders from Eurasia known as the Yamnaya, who contributed the largest genetic share. Who were these mysterious nomadic pastoralists, and how did they shape the ancestry and languages of much of the world?

33 min

08: How We Invented Civilization

As the human population grew, a new kind of settlement emerged: the city. Explore the dynamics of these artificial entities, which became centers of trade, governance, and culture—and of disease. Drawing people from near and far, cities fostered unprecedented genetic exchange. Discover how rapidly they form in the modern world, where more than half of humanity now lives in urban communities.

31 min

09: Migration in the 21st Century

Migration is humanity’s oldest survival strategy—and one we’ll need more than ever, as hotter temperatures and sea-level rise render large parts of the planet uninhabitable. With the global human population now exceeding 8 billion, this relocation will be on a scale far exceeding that out of Africa, or the expansion into formerly frozen lands, or any of the other great migrations by our ancestors.

30 min

10: How We Made Migration Hard

Consider the hurdles faced by people fleeing war, drought, tyranny, or other perils in search of a better life. Today, national borders are their biggest obstacle—yet historically, these boundaries are a very recent invention. How did they arise, and how did the concept of national identity take hold in a species that evolved to manage social life in groups of no more than about 150 individuals?

32 min

11: The Economics of Migration

What are the economic stakes on both sides of migration—what do migrants stand to gain or lose, and how are receiving communities affected in turn? Learn that under most circumstances, migration can be a win/win proposition for all parties. Migrants often seek higher wages and opportunity; host regions gain needed labor, increased economic activity, and younger workers to help support retirees.

31 min

12: The Next Phase of Our Human Journey

As we enter a century of unprecedented global human movement, how can we respond wisely? This final lecture explores the case for managing migration—not merely controlling it. With careful planning, we can build entirely new cities and foster sustainable, well-functioning communities—even as some regions are abandoned and others adapted to meet the realities of a changing climate.

31 min

Overview Course No. 10570

Humans have been on a remarkable journey these past 300,000 years. We started in Africa and slowly spread across the globe—crossing land bridges, sailing into the unknown, and eventually building cities and civilizations. While our primate cousins stayed where they evolved, we moved. Migration isn’t just something we did—it’s a defining trait of our species. Now, after filling the planet, we’re on the move again—not chasing new frontiers, but escaping rising seas, extreme heat, political instability, and economic stress.

The Human Journey covers this epic story in 12 half-hour lectures taught by award-winning science writer, author, and broadcaster Gaia Vince. Few presentations have the scope of this course, taking you from the Stone Age to the future, and featuring topics in anthropology, genetics, archaeology, economics, psychology, and Earth science. Throughout the course, the focus is on the unifying theme of migration.

You learn about key factors that make migration possible—like cooperation, fire, and carrying technology. These developments let us organize hunts, cook food, and transport essentials. You also explore how interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans passed down genes that helped us thrive in climates where we couldn’t otherwise live. And looking ahead, you consider the great waves of migration that are now being set in motion by climate change. As a migrating species, we’ll adapt—just as we always have.

About

Gaia Vince

This century is likely to pose some of the greatest challenges to our species yet, but if our past is an indication of our future, then our ability to adapt and thrive will guide our way.

ALMA MATER

City, University of London

INSTITUTION

Unaffiliated

Gaia Vince is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster. In 2015, she became the first solo female author to win the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books—now known as the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize—for her book Adventures in the Anthropocene. She is an honorary senior research fellow with the multidisciplinary Anthropocene initiative at University College London and the author of Transcendence and Nomad Century. She has held senior editorial positions at Nature and New Scientist and writes for the BBC, Science, The Guardian, and other publications.