There is only one goddess Gaia and Al Gore is her only prophet...

[--Pete]

Hi,

Well, even in the highest tides of emigration to the new world during the 1800's, many stayed behind, and where there was famine, or war, they died in large numbers. Also, the process of emigrating is not always easy, and many died trying.

While the untimely death of a person is a tragedy, the death of a large number is a natural selection process. It is to a species as an amputation is to an individual -- unpleasant but potentially life saving. Besides, compared to the population migrations of the first and early second millennium, those of the 1800s were only a small percentage of the populations involved.

From an archeology perspective, population migration happens over eons or centuries where your son and his new wife live maybe a day or a weeks walk away, but are still connected to the family.

Figuring 25 years as a generation, in less than 3 generations the Visigoths moved from the Caucasus to the central Iberian peninsula. A bit more than a week's walk per generation. They were not the only ones during that period (mid first millennium). The spreading of the Vikings was also pretty much series of long jumps interspersed with long periods of static settlement. Our knowledge of the movements of large numbers in Africa and the Americas is limited because these movements were not recoded in a manner that has come down to us. While the spread of humans from the Bering bridge to Tierra del Fuego may well have been at the rate you claim, there are some indications of rapid changes, especially in Central America. In Asia, we have the rapid movement of the Mongols from Central Asia as far West as the Balkans and as far East as a failed invasion of Japan.

I fear what happens more often than not is that like in Pompeii, some escaped, but most were fried in a pyroclastic flow then buried under tons of ash.

Not at all comparable. Perhaps it was foolish to build a city on the slopes of a dormant volcano, but that has been done (and is being done) many times throughout history. From when the volcano went active till Pompeii was destroyed was, effectively, instantaneous compared to climate change.

--Pete