Why do people migrate and when did it start? It's tempting to think that it's a recent phenomenon, but human migrations have been happening for thousands, if not millions, of years. As for the reasons, they vary. People migrate to act upon their survival instinct (either in search for more resources or to flee from/adapt to changes in their environment), out of hope or curiosity, or due to an "innate disquiet" that suddenly gives them itchy feet. And this doesn't happen exclusively to humans. Animals migrate, too, and basically for the same reasons.

This behaviour is surely advantageous: not only are the pros of mobility perceived as more desirable than the cons (which include dangers and risks due to predators, health issues and scarcity of resources for the whole group), but our species' success seems to come from it. In other words, it could be said that migration created the world as we know it.

This is the theme of We are all from somewhere else (Veniamo tutti da un altro luogo, 2021) by Ruth Padel, British prize-winning poet, classicist and conservationist. In this work that fuses prose with poetry, Padel, a jack-of-all-trades (or, as Telmo Pievani puts it, "Leonardesque"), brings forward examples from the natural world to show how animals' and humans' behaviours are not so different after all: the truth is, nature's own reasons for migration are always scientific, emotional and geographical. In a style that is rather Darwinian in essence (Padel is a great-grand-daughter of Charles Darwin, after all) and following the belief that "poetry and science both reduce complexity to simplicity", her book is a journey across wildlife studies, art, poetry and history, with the final goal to abolish borders, foster compassion and better understand our own humanity.

Being a poet, Padel perceives the world through language, so it is no surprise that the verses were the first parts of the book she came up with. Language also shapes the migration process: before homo sapiens, migrations were unintentional, or forced. After the evolution of homo sapiens, humans' desire to migrate became intentional and driven by the hope of living a better life. This is why every migration involves a good amount of storytelling: migrants inspire and motivate one another through stories, and this in turn facilitates mobility even more.