Massacre of native American women and children in Idaho. Image, endgenocidenow.org
Most palaeontologists seem to agree that our ancestors came from Africa probably between 150,000 and 250,000 years ago, which means that everyone born in Europe is descended from immigrants. By definition, those first arrivals on the European continent would not have encountered their own kind, but they would certainly have come upon near relatives of the modern human species such as homo erectus, and neanderthal man; hominid kin that subsequently died out as homo sapiens settled and multiplied; an early example, perhaps, of human-induced extinction.
Since that first journey out of Africa, migration has been a constant feature of the human story; and it has often been accompanied by a postscript to the effect that when the newcomers have found others occupying land they covet for themselves they have taken on the role of usurpers. Such was the case after the European discovery of the Americas. By the time of this discovery in the last decade of the 15th century, European culture had achieved a level of sophistication – or sophistry – that required claims on “new” territories to be legalised as a means, above all, to forestall squabbles between monarchs over property. Thus, in 1494 – two years after Columbus famously sailed the ocean blue – the divine authority, Pope Alexander VI, partitioned the New World by drawing a line along an imaginary meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, and granting everything east of the line to Portugal and everything beyond to Spain. Most of the lands embraced by this sublime demonstration of ecclesiastical generosity were already inhabited, and in some cases by people who had no word for ownership or property.
