Thank you for this excursion through history about a folk I never have heard before, either. I was reading with interest through the passages of your post and congratulate you for another good peace.

I've heard before that the Bering Road once formed a country passage. This connection between two continents is exemplary for the corresponding conflicts between people, who, as always, without intending it, also influence flora and fauna. On the other hand, the mixing of peoples, which took place before due to migration, shows that identification with a culture seems only very pronounced when one is in crisis situations. As far as peace is concerned, it seems to be a natural curiosity and fascination that brings people together. Bridges are therefore always both: danger as well as opportunity.

As it looks, and as Yuval Harari describes it in one of his books, the occupation of the country by armed conflicts is increasingly history and the conquest of territories on the basis of mineral resources is not very worthwhile, at least not through soldiers and bombardments (losing millions of people like in the great wars I and II). Let us hope that such detentions and expropriations of marginalized populations no longer take place, although there are always conflicts when large construction projects lead through nature conservation or residential areas of inhabitants. The hunger of the great civilizations for resources is unbroken, and it is luck rather than understanding when and where a human being is born.

If we look back, all of us have one or the other migration history in our family tree. Some need only go back very briefly, others need to wander along the centuries.

While reading I wondered if the times when small populations died out due to infectious diseases are over once and for all. The sensitive ecological balance and all living beings on this globe are inevitably interwoven, once again your blog post shows this fact. However, I wish you had mentioned besides the negative consequences of these conquest and loss facts as well as those shown on the other side. But probably it is difficult to find a balance in the historical records and evidence that every movement is as bad as it is good. Nevertheless one can respect and also be sad about the cruelty and deaths related.

For example, many Germans fear for their culture. And indeed, the question seems to be whether there is even such a thing as a unified German culture. I doubt it, because big mega metropolises and the extinction of handicrafts in connection with the resulting traditions undermine such things. We may therefore have the loss of many traditions and rituals, but this is a worldwide phenomenon, wherever large cities act as points of attraction and occupy the land around them. But the loss of identity has much less to do with the people themselves and, in my view, is much more due to architecture, roads, urbanism and technification than to religion and other cultural characteristics.

So, in my heart I feel that I myself am an invader as much as an invaded.