A quote of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl comes to mind as my Global Affairs colleagues consider Parag Khanna's Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization. The anthropologist famous for his voyage on the Kon-Tiki said, "Borders? I have never seen one, but I have heard they exist in the minds of some people."
Heyerdahl would have appreciated Ian Morris's Why the West Rules -- For Now, in which he suggests, "Geography has been the main force determining the different fates of each part of the planet for the past 20,000 years." Once human beings began to settle rather than wander -- about 10,000 years ago -- our attachment to place transformed. We could grow food. We could build homes, cities and walls. We could set sail from Peru to Polynesia and return to Norway, as did Heyerdahl. And we could fight to keep what we had created....
