One might at first be surprised that Clovis descendants could reach Patagonia, lying 8,000 miles south of the US-Canada border, in less than a thousand years. However, that translates into an average expansion of only 8 miles per year, a trivial feat for a hunter-gatherer likely to cover that distance even within a single day's normal foraging.
(Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel)
It has been theorized that a self-replicating starship utilizing relatively conventional theoretical methods of interstellar travel (i.e. no exotic faster-than-light propulsion such as "warp drive", and speeds limited to an "average cruising speed" of 0.1c.) could spread throughout a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years.[2]
(Wikipedia entry for Self-replicating spacecraft. See also: Fermi Paradox.)
For any reasonably long-lived culture, its romantic initial period of expansion and "frontier spirit" is bound to be relatively short compared to the full extent of their continued existence. To idolize such a transient epoch of its history -to nostalgically pine for it- is more than a bit immature. Like a full grown man stuck in his childhood to an unhealthy degree.
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