The Economics of Human Exploration and Migration

Somewhere between insatiable curiosity and voracious appetite for the

accumulation of wealth lies the motivation for human travel. These two
goalposts through which every explorer, merchant and conquistador to roam
this planet sailed do not paint the idealized portrait of natural human
character, but they nonetheless do accurately depict the aims of those
ambitious enough to change the world and therefore merit a place in the halls
of history. Even those forgotten travelers, the Irish immigrants fleeing famine
in the nineteenth century, for example, traveled in search of riches, or at
least wealth greater than they could find at home. Again, through the
economics of profit, and quite accidentally, capitalism shows its
underappreciated head. Just a curiosity killed the cat; however, the covetous
person is always in want. Beyond the moral imperatives present in such a
saying, lies the hidden and likely unintentional implication that other, lessobvisous consequences result from the oldest and most-American of pursuits.

Discussing the entire history of human transportation within the confines of

this brief paper would be, to say the least, a hairy undertaking, so the focus
here will resonate on a single individual and the potential unforseen
consequences of his and his agents' perfectly intentional actions. In addition,
it is far easier, more sensible, and productive, to examine a figure from the
relatively distant past. So to begin with, take the case of John Jacob Astor,
who died in 1848 as one of America's outstanding foreign merchants ' . Born
in Germany, by the time he reached twenty, Astor had already traveled
throughout Western Europe and to New York City when he began a trading
business. Examine to this point the modes of transportation and distances
Astor had traveled: roughly 1334 miles on land and 3670 miles by sea. To do
so not only cost an enormous amount, but encouraged the travel of a number
of unintended companions: rats, roaches, and pathogens, to ennumerate but
a few of the most commonly encountered of parasites. In five short years of
his lifespan, Astor traveled more in total distance than any member of the
ancient hunter-gatherer cultures would in a lifetime. This travel, the majority
of which was completed on ship, was the beginning of a human monoculture.

With advances in travel, particularly in the areas of speed and avalability of

transportation, come a number of effects on populational diversity. For one,
wealthier people--those that can afford this type of travel--, begin to have a

greater genetic advantage over the poor. With travel comes the opportunity
to, referring to the act in the Biblical sense, spread one's seed far and wide.
Astor, a German, ended up marrying an American of British descent, a union
not possible save for the ability to travel in order to first meet each other.
Their children, effectively a combination product of British and German genes
were that much less genetically diverse than the same number of children
born to either Astor or his wife and a member of their own locality. In theory,
this could also hold true for British rats stowed away aboard a ship mating
with American counterparts. In addition, wealthier families--the same ones
able to trvel--could afford to provide for a greater-then-average number of
children, thereby further encouraging the incidence of cross-cultural
breeding. In the long term, this has two main effects: one, an increase in
genetic diversity measured in locality-specific genetic terms and a
corresponding decrease of "locality-inbreeding", and two, a decrease in
genetic diversity skewed towards the wealthy. Offspring of prosperous
families, then, had (and continue to have) an even greater advantage to
survive and reproduce for another generation in the age of long-distance
transportation than in proir eras. Considering, however, that affluent
individuals have always had a significant reproductive advantage, the net
effect of commonly available transport was to provide for greater genetic
diversity, as per effect one mentioned above.

Mr. Astor, with the help of his wife, founded a fur trading business that made
regular ship journeys across the Atlantic and later even the Russians across
the Pacific. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Astor's several ships
traveled to China and India, as well as throughout North America and to
Wester Europe, earning him between $50 and $100 thousand annually. Just to
complete this brief biography, it deserves mention that Astor died America's
first millionaire, primarily the result of his prescient investment of profits into
the rapidly appreciating real estate of Manhattan, New York. There is little
doubt that Astor sent his captains and purchasing agents abroad for no
purpose other than profit; a retun on the reportedly $800 thousand he had
invested in the shipping businesses. Clearly, this international trade Astor and
his associates engaged in had little affect on genetic diversity. At least human
diversity. What it did manage was the spreading of flora, fauna, and cultural
content from continent to continent. Although there can be no conclusive
proof that a certain ship brought a certain plant abroud, take the following
scenario: the brassica rapa, a small plant grown in Europe for 4000 years
(and brought with early settlers to the New World) first began appearing in
the Canton region of China around the middle of the nineteenth century. This
timing corresponds directly with increased trade between the Americas and
the Orient realized primarily by Astor's merchanting business. The brassica

rapareproduced so rapidly in the Chinese environment that a variant of the

original European plant is now known as "Chinese cabbage" and can now be
seen as far north as the Beijing region. It was primarily a pest to Chinese
farmers that has been more recently harnessed to provide food for a growing
population.. In any case, Trade on such an international scale as was made
possible by Mr. Astor, virtually guarantees the introduction of organisms into
environments not originally possible, often--although certainly not always-with devastating effects.

As the case of John Jacob Astor and his international merchant shipping
industry shows, transportation on a global scale, as motivated by the drive
for more and more money, is sure to have a great many effects on genetic
and locational diversity of a species. What cannot be assured nor even truly
judged is the magnitude and degree to which these introductions affect a
given environment, as the examples of the rabbit and cane toad intentionally
brought in to Australia so much more clearly show. The best option is to
simply not meddle, as ecosystems have a way of sorting themselves out
quite effectively. The one problem with this "best option" is obvious: it
requires an end to rapid transportation and would stiffle economic
development across the world.

Sources

1 Wu Leung, et.al., Part I. Proximate Composition Mineral and Vitamin

Contents of East Asian Foods, (FAO & U.S. Dept. HEW: 1972).

2 Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man, (Cambridge, MA

1931).