Musings of an insomniac

Last night I wasn't able to sleep due to a splitting headache. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't clear my mind and relax. When this happens, I am not usually thinking about what happened that day or what I'll have to do at work tomorrow or remember to pick up at the grocery store. No, usually the most random thoughts just pop into my brain and keep me up.

Here's the thought process I went through last night.

Mom and Dad are in Rome. They are traveling. On a journey. Most people like to travel. We love road trips. Animals travel - aka migrate. Why don't humans migrate? We probably used to. Why? Because pre-historic man had to follow the food source and seasons. Why do animals today migrate? To follow food, seasons/water, and to find mates or have offspring. So modern humans don't need to migrate because we have the means to grow and distribute food, get water from reservoirs, and invented electric or gas run ac/heat. We also have things like Match.com and hospitals. How many animals can I think of that migrate? Elephants, almost all African savannah animals, almost every species of bird, whales, butterflies & other insects, sea turtles, penguins (duh, they are a bird which I already thought of), fish. So pretty much some species in every animal group migrate. Do any of the apes migrate? Hmm, I don't really know for sure. I think gorillas will go up and down a mountain with the rainy season, but I'm not sure. New world monkeys, old world monkeys (no prehensile tail, yes! I still remember a little bit of physical anthropology), baboons, chimps, bonobos, organgs, lemurs, hmm, I don't know if any of them migrate. Why don't apes migrate? Humans are an ape. How long have humans had a fixed food source? Since they started farming. When was that? Ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Incans, Aztecs, Native Americans, African bushmen, Mongols (they farmed, right, in addition to plundering?), all farmed. Wow, I don't know much about ancient civilizations. If all our corn fields or rice paddies suddenly relocated themselves to warmer climes during the winter, would we all follow them? That's a funny mental picture. Corn stalks marching down to winter in Brazil. Oh, are Snowbirds migrating? No, not really because that's a choice they make. Sure, they may not like the cold, but they could definitely survive in cold. But then what about the people who followed their food like the plains Indians, or the Inuit who obviously can't grow much in the frozen tundra. Oh, that's right. They would kill enough animals, preserve them, and make it through the winters, right? If history hadn't turned out the way it did, would there still be people following the buffalo? What about modern day nomads in Siberia? Are the they only people left on the planet who still migrate because they have to? Well, the Irish had to move during the potato famine. But was that migration? Their move to the US was a fight-or-flight reaction. Stay and have face the strong potential of death, or move and reduce that chance. Migration is an instinct. Fight-or-flight is an instinct. Does that mean all refugees are fight-or-flight? In Africa, people are moving all over the place. The difference between now and then is that there are borders now. And in Africa, water can be scarce and far away. People walk miles for water. Why do they do that? Borders between countries so people can't just move as easily. No, I don't think all refugees leave their home because they might die. Those people in Israel who were removed from their homes were not going to be killed if they didn't leave. Where am I in this thought? I starting this off thinking about Mom and Dad in Rome. I want to go to sleep. It's 1:30, arg. So do we, modern humans, still have that instinct to migrate? Whether it is activated by a fight-or-flight switch, or just the desire to see new places. Is that why we like to travel? Maybe the instinct still exists in our primitive brain stem just as our vestigial tail and gills still exist during development in utero. Evolution and man's technological advances have buried that migratory instinct.

It's a wonder I actually fell asleep last night.