HumanityAtTheEdgeOfSpace
From SpaceWiki
Humanity At the Edge of Space - Adding Depth to the Sky
A Personal View
Introduction to the Series
What follows is a series of essays that connect together to focus on humanity's migration to space. At present we are at the edge of space looking out. We have sent brief expeditions outward and operate important economic and military sectors on the near frontier, but we have yet to truly migrate. By the time we are done here, the reader should have a new perspective on our current situation and plans for our future.
These essays set a stage for our activities. Connecting space settlement to past migrations reveals useful similarities. Connecting past discoveries of social and economic organizations to our future options reveals useful hard lessons we need not repeat. Connecting our legal regimes of today to their history reveals how they were fashioned to meet social needs and makes them useful tools for a space future we find difficult to predict.
The particular details of science, economics, and law might not stand up to rigorous academic review, but that isn’t our purpose. Scholastic rigor in any of these fields reveals great depth and complexity and risks overpowering our intended purpose. Our aim is to set a stage for our settlement story. To meet this aim, we finish with a vision of the next migration as a context for a variety of tales. This vision is the set, lighting and sound system and shows how the tales may be staged.
Humanity at the Edge
On Human Migration
The stories of the migrations of humanity across the face of the Earth are many and date well back to before we recorded our history in written forms. The oldest of them can be partially read from the genetic heritage of people who have yet to inter-marry in the great globalization event underway today. Matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry can be tracked to approximate regions and approximate times with slowly degrading resolution as we work back to a time when our people became a distinct species. Mitochondrial Eve is known to have lived about 8,000 generations ago, Y-chromosomal Adam is estimated at about 3,500 generations ago and the first migration for modern humans leaving Africa only a few hundred generations after that. The parts of our genome that barely change through small mutations over many generations are now being read and our pre-history explored.
The grand story of exactly how humanity spread across the globe will be written and rewritten as scientists learn more, but there is a portion of the early tale that looks solid enough to be worth close attention here because it matters to those of us trying to open the space frontier. The first few pages of our story show us departing Africa and spreading into a world already populated by our cousin species from earlier migrations. They also tell of a people that lived, at least partially, off food derived from the sea. This was a time long before the agricultural revolution, so we were all hunting and gathering where we could. Whether we engaged in beach combing or fishing and scavenging from small boats seems like a question that might be of interest only to academics, but after we read the next page of the story we see that the first successful migration out of Africa probably occurred from the Horn of Africa across to the Arabian Peninsula. During the Ice age the seas were much lower and the gap into the Red Sea was much narrower. The tale suggests that migration was undertaken by people who already had enough technology to cross that gap with enough of their resources to survive on the other side. This requires more than hopping on a floating log and living to tell the tale. Whole families and tribes must have crossed for there to be enough genetic diversity for these people to remain fertile for generations to come. If the tale is true, our ancestors had technology.
There are scientists who argue humanity went around the north end of the Red Sea instead, but they face arguments that the path was largely desert during ice age periods. Climate refugia may have existed enabling beach combers to walk the path. This variation of the story is still useful to us as it relates to the space frontier, though. In this variation, the tale tells of people who walked along the South Asia coast past modern India to Indonesia and then leapt to Australia about 1,000 generations later. The crossing to Australia is not in question. This accomplishment required good sea-going boat technology even during the Ice Age. There is even a version of this story that says it happened twice with people walking it the first time only to be killed by the Toba super volcano eruption about 75,000 years ago. The second wave repopulated the region from the very few, possibly 10,000 people or less, who survived the catastrophe. They had to have boats capable of cross the gap to Australia about 40,000 years ago.
These earliest migrations are relevant to our effort to open the space frontier for a number of reasons. The first is recognition that inland conditions on the Asian continent were not suited to the first modern humans anymore than space is for us. Our species was recently adapted to life in Africa, so life in northern Europe and Asia during the last glacial maximum was simply out of the question. We had yet to adapt genetically or develop the technology necessary for long term survival in the cold, so our hunter-gatherer ancestors spread along the easy axis of Asia where the climate accommodated them and competition with our cousin species was to our advantage. Coastal boat and raft technology made travel along this axis easy, fast, and relatively risk free. Water enables boat travel in certain directions while the land between hinders travel. This is similar to our activities in space on the near frontier because outer space and the edge of space are even more hostile to the humans of today than Siberia was to us 2,500 generations ago. We have considerably more technology today, but we are recently adapted to life on Earth's surface where air and water are plentiful and heat sinks are abundant. Our technology enables movement along easy axes, though. Commercial aviation hugs the ground while commercial space keeps below or just above the Van Allen radiation belts but doesn't venture closer than LEO or father than GEO. Thin air and high radiation act much like high mountains do to impede travel using simple technology.
The second point of relevancy is recognition that inland habitats were different in non-intuitive ways. The animals, plants, and dangers were different inward from the coast. Our ancestors were capable of adapting to new conditions, but with little need to take on the arduous task of pioneering a new land, we tend not to do it even today. It takes considerable drive before a population will depart from even the most deplorable conditions of starvation, war, and disease. Most will simply hunker down and plan for better times we are sure must be coming ahead. The mitochondrial evidence of the African migration points to something similar happening because all non-African humans alive today share a common genetic heritage suggesting the possibility that our first migration out of Africa was also our last before the historical age. That same evidence also suggests that that the North and South American continents were first peopled by a very, very small starting population. We don’t yet know if they walked between ice sheets along the continental divide or sailed between coastal refugia along modern British Columbia, but we do know very few people formed the starting population and their transport method had to be fast.
It is possible that intervening hostile territory like the desert of the Arabian Peninsula or the ice sheets covering Canada acted as a geographical bottleneck discouraging the majority of people who faced them and leaving the rich lands beyond as a reward for those who dared migrate. If so, this subject should be familiar to those who think about geopolitics and should be useful to our possible space migration stories. From where we sit today, space looks hostile and bounded by difficult regions, but a few daring souls see riches awaiting them if they can muster the courage and resources needed to get there. It is possible few will succeed in migrating, but form a starting population anyway. It is also possible the first few will create a bridge the rest of humanity can use.
The last point of relevancy comes from the chapter of the story where humanity followed the retreat of the ice northward into Asia and Europe. Between 1,500 and 2,000 generations ago, we moved north into climates and environments previously unapproachable. Around this time our sibling species derived from Homo Erectus met their end. The Neanderthals disappeared, perhaps pushed out of their habitats by our ancestors or by rapid climate changes. The science is not yet settled. The retreat of the ice does not imply the inland regions became warm and comfortable for very long periods, though. Vostok ice cores suggest there was a bone crushingly cold period after our ancestors moved inland as far as they could go. Variations in available hunting grounds would have pressured everyone who depended upon them. It is doubtless many who traveled farthest north died or were cut off.
This too should be familiar because it is during the intervening generations that humanity developed new technology and knowledge that enabled us to move once there was enough pressure to do so. We put ourselves at risk in new environments and absolutely needed new technologies to survive. The climate was far from ideal for a people recently departed from Africa and adapted to coastal life, yet we went and survived in large enough numbers to repopulate areas we lost earlier to the cold. As if to prove the point, yet another migration from central Asia pushed north into Siberia and the Arctic Sea coasts less than 500 generations ago when the inland ice sheets were gone. These people learned to live on the most frozen terrain humans have ever chosen to call home and they thrived.
Finally, we must not ignore the colonization of the South Pacific by the Polynesian peoples. This story is much like the migration through the frozen northern lands, but it occurred recently enough to leave archaeological and knowledge artifacts that survive today. We know relatively well how the people did what they did and now their boating technology was matched by a sophisticated, yet low tech approach to navigation. The broader Austronesian people migrated across half the world from Madagascar to Hawaii as evidenced by the relationships between their languages. Whether we hold to the heroic or luck views for how the Polynesians found new islands doesn’t matter, for once they did find them they learned to navigate between them with good accuracy. They could not hug any large coastlines as they sailed because there are no such coasts in the southern Pacific Ocean and their destination islands were not large. Non-instrument navigation skills were the difference between success and failure and between life and death.
The relevance of the Polynesian migration to future space colonization is obvious even to casual students. Small river boats and sea-going vessels are constructed to different designs. Flat bottom boats work well for shallow, calm rivers, lakes and littoral regions, but they get their occupants killed in deep, turbulent waters of the open sea. Multi-hulled and out-rigger canoes offer more stability over deep water and aren’t a giant intellectual leap from their parent designs. Multi-hulled canoes with structure between them supporting a living space, storage, and a sail made it possible to range far from home and carry the supplies needed to survive the journey. Look to the designs being considered for human exploration of the Moon, Mars and asteroids and it is obvious we carry the abstractions of past lessons with us into our new age.
For space, though, we humans simply aren't out there in large enough numbers that could be meaningfully distinguished from a round off error for zero. We are still standing on the shore looking outward and only occasionally do we put a tentative toe in the water. However, there is a lesson in all this anyway. Once we are partially out there, our descendants are likely to repeat the tricks used by our ancestors who faced deserts, cold, and open seas. We don't have to solve every problem during our current generation. We probably can't conceive of all the problems that will need solving, let alone find viable solutions for them. For example, who would have expected the African travelers to anticipate that learning the ins and outs of reindeer herds and whale pods would enable their descendants to manage a subsistence living in the frozen lands of Siberia and Beringia and inhabit the frozen coasts of Arctic North America? They hadn't seen reindeer and whales yet. Who would have expected them to know that frigate birds seriously dislike landing on water, thus enabling people who have captured them to release them over the open sea and follow them to land or recover them if the bird didn’t see an island close by? They hadn’t see frigate birds yet and couldn’t possibly know their behavior. There are easy dimensions along which we can expand into space if we consider the history of our species and how we solved similar problems in the past. From those refugia we will learn the new problems and expand the boundaries of our known world yet again.
On The Known World
Consider how our ancestors felt looking across the Red Sea toward the Arabian Peninsula. With sea levels roughly 100 meters lower than today, they may have been able to see the other side. Consider how another generation felt looking across the gap to Australia. It is doubtful they could see it directly from nearby shores, but a sea going culture would know the signs when they saw them suggesting land beyond the horizon. We know most people did not traverse the gaps, but some did. When they did they expanded the world known to humans. They also expanded our cultural dimensions with new solutions to new problems
Try to imagine how the migrators felt. Those who made the leap were among the few with either the courage to leave and risk never coming back or the bad luck of drifting away and the good luck of surviving. Anyone who can evoke those feelings within themselves or others is a rare person, though, because few people actually migrate. Most who do are probably immigrants traveling to a place where they don't know the people, might not speak the language, and have little idea of how they will fare month to month, let alone know what their lives will be like in a few years. Our natural fear of the unknown usually dominates and prevents such risks. For those of us who are not inclined to migrate it is challenging to understand someone who is. The passion to leave is a passion for risk and a willingness to face the unknown. We ask how it can be that what they had was so terrible to warrant moving on. Usually things aren't so bad for us where we are and we work with what we have at hand. However, some people go anyway. Those who remain behind may never understand why.
From the early migrations, we know that many who left did so via boats of some type. Good boat designs for river crossings are different from ones used on lakes and sea coasts. We don't know exactly how the early migrations were accomplished when it comes to boat design, but we can make some educated guesses. The leap to the Arabian Peninsula might not have been all that difficult with low sea levels, so relatively crude floatation may have been enough. Rafting from one island to another is risky, but it can be done. People who do migrate do take risks, so rafts are sufficient for the first step. The migration to Australia took better technology, though. With about 1,000 generations of experience living along and traveling along the southern coast of Asia we had plenty of time to learn. Tribes that could fish in deeper water or rougher weather or for longer periods of time would have had a long term advantage over ones that lacked such things. Tribes that could control inland spaces containing resources they needed to improve their boats had another advantage. One thousand generations is an immense amount of time for modern humans to learn something useful about sea travel and there is no doubt we did. The migration to Australia proves we did it long before we invented anything our modern cultures would consider sophisticated. The archeologists and anthropologists know better.
There is a difference between exploration and migration that is important to distinguish. Explorers expand the known world for the sake of doing it. Their reasons for doing it range from spiritual journeys to hunts for personal wealth and may be as numerous as the explorers themselves. They might not stay in new regions for long, though, choosing instead to return home or explore elsewhere. Migrators expand the known world for the sake of living elsewhere. If they plan to return it is usually to collect relatives or resources to bring back with them when they return to their new home. Migrators relocate their homes and may go so far as to affiliate with new people, learn a new language, and seriously alter the way they live. Both groups expand what is known, but they do so for different purposes. The fact that migrators often depend on knowledge gained by explorers doesn’t mean one must exist if the other does. Rarely are people in both groups.
We see the value of this distinction with the migrations that lead inward to the Asian interior. Our people were hunter-gathers through most of history and had experience in the African interior, but central Asia during the last glacial maximum presented new environments, problems and threats. Tribes that rely upon hunting and gathering can't carry every possible piece of survival gear that would aid them, yet they can't rely upon the resources they need being where they are when they are. The one thing they can carry easily, though, is their knowledge for it weighs nothing. Hunters must travel where their prey travels, so exploration was required for our survival. Knowledge of what was over the horizon, therefore, had survival value. Foragers, meanwhile, must learn the gritty details of the world immediately around them. Creating a depth to the knowledge one had within the current horizon, therefore, had survival value. As we moved inland chasing prey animals we began to know the broader world through exploration. As we relocated inland chasing foraging opportunities we began to know a deeper world through migration. One generation could explore while a later one could migrate. With these tools we made all but one of the world continents home to a number of tribes with nothing more sophisticated that hunter-gather techniques and Pleistocene technologies.
The migrations into and long term survival of people in Beringia suggests the possibility that they dropped the boat knowledge of their ancestors in favor of technologies more relevant. If they crossed into North America along the continental divide, they didn’t need boats. However, the wave of people who came after them and populated the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland after the retreat of the ice sheets did no such thing. We can be certain of them because their cultures survived into the modern, historical age. In their travels they show how exploration and migration dove-tail to aid survival. In their travels they show how sea travel technologies got abstracted and reinvented in new forms. An ice sled, whether pulled by people or dogs, and a shallow water canoe are not fundamentally different. One relies on buoyancy and the other on low sliding friction, but both permit the movement of volumes of material across hostile boundaries and regions without a person having to carry the load on their back. One is moved by poling or paddling and the other by dragging, but both leverage the available muscle power to move weights that would otherwise require a much more robust power source. Both allow hunters to bring home game animals. Both allow tribes to relocate and forage new lands. Both expand what is possible for humanity and have strong survival value.
However, it is the abstraction into knowledge that can be remembered and carried at no cost. It is the abstraction that we gain from knowing the broader and deeper world that gives us the most value. With that value we have crossed boundaries between environments like no other primate before us. When the ice retreated to leave us unchallenged in vast regions we knew, we even began to shape new technologies that reshaped those environments. The feedback between exploration and migration continues today into realms beyond geography and our known world expands most everywhere we find a horizon. Boundaries challenge us because we are the survivors of people who surpassed them and grew to know the world.
