Abstract

It is widely understood that ice ages are periods when ancient humans constantly migrated mainly due to changes in climate. This article proposes that the combination of the precession of the Earth’s axis and the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit around the world creates an ideal climate latitude, which has major impacts on migration patterns. During the ice ages the orbit of the Earth’s axis is considerably elliptic and the difference in distance from the Earth to the Sun during the perihelion and aphelion reached as much as 12%, which resulted in a difference of irradiation of 27%. The precession of the Earth’s axis changes the latitude where the Sun is perpendicular to the Sun during the aphelion and perihelion in a cycle of 19 to 26 thousand years. Ancient civilizations prevailed or purposely migrated to latitudes with the most favorable climate, where the aphelion happened during the summer and the perihelion happened during the winter. This article shows that major ancient migration patterns follow with some precision this ideal climate latitude.

Keywords:Ancient migrations; Earth’s axis precession; Ice ages; Climate change