Flat Earth: The History of the Ball - The Endarkenment

This is a speculative historical narrative of how we ended up with the Fake Space situation we have today. So let's go back to the start of it.

Back in the days of Galileo & Co - in a world where the Heliocentric model was fresh out of the crib, and European exploration of the world was in its infancy - the world would've been ripe for such new ideas concerning the nature of the Earth.

Now it's my conjecture that it was only at this point in history that the idea that we live on a globe gained a lot of ground.

The conventional history states that people knew we lived on a ball right back as far as the ancient Greeks. That people were aware of this and were comfortable with the idea, and that the Copernican Revolution was in effect just a switching of a model with a globular Earth at the centre, for a model with a globular Earth orbiting the Sun.

Now I would contest this idea just based on pure logic. In a world where the Earth is the centre of the universe it really doesn't matter what shape it is. Even if you figure out that the heavenly bodies are going around your Earth (around and underneath the Earth relative to your position on it) this still doesn't necessitate a globe. The Sun and Moon could be going down into a distant sea, or some distant hollow opening, or anywhere the imagination can conjure.

Even with a model where the Earth is afloat in empty space as we envision it now, with orbiting bodies going around it, there is still no real need for it to be a ball. It could be any other shape, and people could be living on a flat level surface atop any other shaped Earth. To jump to a position where people are hanging upside down relative to one another on a ball would be quite a leap.

We must also take into account the historical picture. Before the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the Americas by Columbus, Europeans had limited knowledge of the Earth's geography. Even places as far as China were only known through tales and semi-mythical accounts. Accurate pictures of the night sky from anywhere other than Europe would have been unavailable to philosophers and astronomers living in Europe.

It's only once you place the Sun at the centre of the solar system and have the Earth revolving around that Sun that you need Earth to also be ball-shaped. In a geocentric model the Earth is separate from everything else - it doesn't have to be a circular luminary. However, once you have the Earth as just another orbiting body in the sky then it has to be circular like everything else up there.

I would speculate that this is partly why the Copernican Revolution was such a huge deal at the time. Big and important enough for people to be deemed heretics for openly believing in it. It wasn't just the substitution of one cosmological model of spinning orbs for another. It was a shift in the entire way we see the Earth on which we live. It literally turned the world on its head.

Now again, this is just my speculation. However, even just looking at things from the traditional historic point of view it's easy to see how the Copernican model gained ground with intellectuals at the time.

It produced a model that explained the relationship between the Moon and Sun. It also tallied beautifully with many of the observations about the world that were coming to light at the time. Galileo, through his telescope, observed for the first time the moons of Jupiter - a seeming replica in miniature of the solar system model.

As European explorers traversed the oceans they noted that everywhere in the southern hemisphere the stars rotated clockwise and not anti-clockwise like in the north. They also discovered that as you travelled further and further south the temperature got colder and colder - just like when you travelled north. This all lent itself very much to the idea that the Earth was indeed a ball, and that the Copernican worldview was correct - and as a consequence this became the fashionable mode of thinking amongst men of education and letters.

(Francis Drake with globe)

I've speculated on this blog before that Shakespeare's Globe theatre was evidence that this was a new and fashionable way of viewing the world for progressive people at the time. We can also see that it became fashionable for people to be painted with globes around this time as well. Had I been living during this era I myself would have no doubt been equally enamoured with these new fantastic ideas and discoveries.

Of course, these discoveries also ran parallel to other, more earthly, discoveries. In fact, it was the very same thinkers and intellectuals that made the new discoveries in natural science and mathematics that paved the way for the Enlightenment. The wave of enquiry that produced the Heliocentric model led to the many other discoveries that our modern world stands upon today.

The expansion of European empires, exploration, science, technology, art and philosophy. It all blossomed together. From the same culture, by the same thinkers and philosophers, generation after generation. Right up until and through the Enlightenment. The success and fruits of this collective cultural trend were undeniable. The unstoppable march of science and reason was self-evident.

This march also slowly and comprehensively marginalised and eroded religion, not to mention every other culture on Earth that it came into contact with. It was the future, and everything else was a relic of the past.

But what if some of the foundations of this great burst in understanding and progress were wrong? It's here that we come back to Flat Earth and other alternative cosmologies.

If you look at the history of the Flat Earth movement it seems that it was in the 19th century that it really started to publicly challenge accepted science. This seems very odd at first as we're brought up to see flat earth as a very primitive and very old idea. It seems a little bizarre to modern eyes that people in the 19th century would embrace such a thoroughly debunked and outdated concept.

However, if we look back we can see that maybe the march of science was losing a little confidence. We had things such as the Michelson-Morley experiment and Airy's Failure at this time, where difficult questions that weren't easily answered were being probed. Were doubts maybe creeping in about aspects of the cosmological picture at this time? Could the historical trend that had brought so much progress have some of its fundamentals wrong?

It's here that we come to Einstein. When I studied science as a teenager I always found it strange that Einstein's revolutionary concepts were accepted so readily by the scientific establishment. Science in effect traded Newton's clockwork universe - the cherished world view of reasoned men - and substituted it for something much more counter-intuitive - Einstein's paradox laden relativistic space-time.

Normally such huge revolutions in thinking find a lot of resistance and it often takes at least a generation to overcome this. Now there was some resistance to the ideas Einstein was proposing, which I'm sure some people will point out. However, it still always struck me as odd how quickly it was all embraced. Of course, now I look back I can see that the reason Einstein's ideas were so quickly adopted was possibly because science needed Einstein. His ideas explained many of the things that science was struggling with - particularly relating to cosmology. In many ways Einstein rescued everything the scientific establishment cherished.

Now it's interesting to note that Einstein first published his special theory of relativity in 1905, six years before man first reached the South Pole (1911). I find it really amazing that man could explain the entirety of the cosmos before even fully exploring the Earth's surface. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that Einstein was wrong, but it does help put things into perspective a little. It also highlights the technological limitations that existed even as recently as the beginning of the 20th century.

It was only approximately 100 years ago that man developed the technology to fully explore the polar regions of the Earth. So no-one could have known through direct experience the true geography of Earth before this time.

Now I would ask the simple question; what would happen if they started exploring these polar extremes of the Earth, and they discovered that the cosmological model they had such unerring faith in wasn't 100% accurate?

Would they tell the world? Would they keep it quiet until they'd conducted more research? Would the scientists and leaders even believe the information they were receiving from the explorers they'd sent forth? How big a shock would it be to an individual or to the system as a whole to discover that the nature of reality was so fundamentally different to what was assumed?

What effect would such a revelation have on the world at large? Most of the population at this time, despite all the post-enlightenment progress, was still heavily religious. What effect would such a revelation have on people's behaviour? In 1950's America people were still so religious that some feared that listening to Rock & Roll would result in eternal damnation. What effect would the knowledge that our entire cosmology was wrong have on people such as that?

What effect would it have on the march of scientific progress were the world to discover that science was so wrong about such a fundamental truth? And that religions and their primitive unreasoned doctrines were much more close to the truth after all?

Would an enlightened ruling elite keep such a truth from the less educated world population for fear of it destroying and undermining all the progress humanity had made? Would it be feared that such a revelation would return the world to unthinking religious darkness?

If we look at alien and conspiracy lore one of the common themes often repeated was that the authorities couldn't release knowledge of aliens and UFOs back in the fifties because such a revelation would have caused panic. That it would have led to the breakdown of society, as people weren't mentally prepared for such a huge world-changing revelation.

I would hazard a guess though that this was something of smokescreen - like most of the "alien/UFO" media outpourings we've seen. People, even back then, were raised on a diet of sci-fi and rocket ships. Alien life, though extraordinary, was very much within the worldview of the average person, certainly people raised in the western world anyway.

I would guess that the real secret that couldn't be revealed to the general public for fear of societal breakdown was the knowledge that the very nature of reality was somehow fundamentally different to what we had thought. It's a fear I would have shared at the time had I been in a similar position.

Of course, it should be said at this point that all of the above is purely hypothetical. Just speculation on my part. Anyone who's read this far may be thinking that it's absurd to even consider that the Earth may not be a globe, and that Flat Earth or some other alternative cosmology may be closer to the mark.

Personally, I don't have any fixed opinion. Just a fascination with the topic in general. I am very confident though that what we're shown from space by NASA and their friends is largely fraudulent. It's this that leads me to feel that such speculations are completely justified and maybe even necessary.

The fact that NASA & Co have failed to return to the Moon after almost 50 years - despite the significant advance in technology - should be enough to raise alarm bells for even the most believing of people. On top of this the sheer absurdity of all the proposed attempts to go to Mars we see portrayed in the media, before even attempting to go back to the Moon no doubt, is also epically impossible to rationalise.

And so this leads me to the title of this post; The Endarkenment.

The enlightenment was a beautiful thing, and the benefits and knowledge gained as a result of it immeasurable. I can easily imagine why, in the name of progress, secrets could be kept to preserve the fruits of this collective labour (though I don't think I could ever acquiesce in such a deception). However, to successfully continue such lies, in the face of such questioning, and in an age of such technological brilliance, would require the human population to be so dumbed down and so repressed from childhood onwards that we'd be living in a dark age far darker than any previously experienced.

To fake the Moon landings was one thing and happened in a now distant era, but to attempt to fake Mars landings in our current era could only be laughable or diabolical. For such a thing to succeed people would have to be manipulated to the point of zombification.

(Hipster Zombie)

The Waterworld Tattoo; North Pole, South Pole, Himalayas

Quite a lighthearted post today. Last night I watched the movie Waterworld. For those who've never seen it, it's set in a watery future where, thanks to the melting of the polar icecaps, the whole world is now submerged beneath the ocean. What's left of humanity struggling to survive on the ocean's surface, drifting aimlessly on various floating contraptions.

It was also at the time the most expensive movie ever made (it's release came in 1995). It's an odd movie in a way and was generally perceived as a huge flop at the time. Although it's incredibly cheesy, for some reason I've always quite liked it. In fact, I remember years ago, when I was studying music at Middlesbrough College, having a friend who semi-ironically always claimed it was his favourite movie. Whenever he said this I kind of knew what he meant. You can enjoy it on two levels - you can laugh at it, but also get caught up in its epic adventurousness.

When I watched it last night it was the first time I'd seen the film in quite a long while. So I was interested to see if there was anything I'd missed, or that had went over my head, when I'd originally viewed it. In the alternative conspiracist world there's often this notion that truth is hidden in Hollywood movies. With this being the "most expensive ever made" at the time, I thought it would be worth a re-look. Especially with regard to the flat earth/alternative cosmology revival that's taken place online in recent years. This being very much an Earth-themed movie.

Anyway, what caught my eye this time was the tattoo map that figures heavily in movie. This is a tattoo that's found on the back of a young girl, which is thought to be a map showing the way to dry land. In fact, the entire movie revolves around the goodies and baddies fighting for possession of this young girl in order to gain possession of the all-important map.

The map is globe-shaped and contains an arrow pointing to a mountain situated at the top. The tattoo also contains what look like strange Chinese characters. (It can be viewed in the top right hand corner of the first image in this article).

Intrigued, I had a search online and came across the following Cracked article that explains the tattoo (along with a few other tattoos featured in movies).

5 Cryptic Movie Tattoos (They Didn't Think We'd Translate)

The article provides a translation of the Chinese characters (plus the one Japanese character also oddly included). They translate as map coordinates. Giving a longitude and a latitude for a specific location on the globe - that location being Mount Everest in the Himalayas.

However, strangely the tattoo actually gets the latitude and the longitude the wrong way round. The actual location of Mount Everest is longitude 86 degrees, 56 minutes and latitude 27 degrees, 59 minutes. The tattoo gives longitude 27 degrees, 59 minutes and latitude 86 degrees, 56 minutes.

The tattooed map also fails to give directions for the coordinates. Latitude goes from 0 degrees at the equator to 90 degrees at the poles. So 86 degrees could be either 86 degrees north from the equator, or 86 degrees south. Likewise longitude can go east or west from the prime meridian, going up to 180 degrees either way. So the location given could have been any one of four places on the globe.

The Cracked article states that the errors in the map are simply lazy mistakes, which seems completely reasonable given how complicated Chinese characters are for westerners to understand. Plus longitude and latitude are easy concepts to confuse. Plus plus ..it's just a movie.

However, it would be interesting if the mistakes were deliberate as it would mirror another geographical confusion I've mentioned on here before. Namely discussions about the "centre" of the Earth. On the famous flat earth map the centre is the North Pole. (Of course, there is no centre on a globe). However, in other cultures the Himalayas are often seen as the centre of the world. I've noted before the Theosophical obsession with the Himalayas in the 19th and early 20th century.

If we read the coordinates on the tattoo map as they appear, then all four possible locations fall at the poles. Two at the North Pole, and two at the South Pole (86 degrees being very close to the 90 degree north/south coordinate signifying each pole). So once again we have this overlap between the poles and the Himalayas.

Earth Agnostic: The Endless Forest

In this series of articles I've been considering the possibility that our stipulated model of the Earth may be incorrect. Is the cosmology we're taught actually right? Is the map of the earth even correct?  ..and if it isn't, why would this not be open knowledge? What's with all the secrecy?

One thing I've been considering is what would happen were it to be discovered that things were not as they first seemed. For example, let's say it's the late 19th century. The Heliocentric model is firmly enshrined as truth. The learned men of the day so confident they have it all worked out that they don't even think to question the fundamental concepts everything rests upon. Now what would happen if some discovery was made that brought this certainty into question? How would people deal with it? Would they even be able to cope with such a groundbreaking shift in perception? Would the leaders that were in charge tell the general public? Would the public be ready or even willing to accept the information being offered? And how would such a message affect society in general?

These thoughts and ideas overlap with something else I've been considering lately. Namely the idea that "conspiracies" - both big and small - far from being impossible or unlikely, are actually inevitable. I'm essentially working on a theory that states that conspiracies, even huge ones, can develop organically. An inevitable output that naturally develops from all the lies, errors and crimes that accumulate over time. So, just as the lies of a single person can often spiral out of control, as small lies get covered up by bigger and bigger lies, and so on and so forth. So too can the lies and errors of an entire social structure accumulate into bigger and bigger fallacies and untruths. Even to the point of reaching absurdity.

So for example, with my model, as one empire rises - let's say the British Empire - an empire of lies or errors will inevitably rise alongside it.

A good example is the Catholic Church. No doubt the Catholic Church originally began as a small movement, centred around a core set of beliefs and ideas. However, as the church grew and got bigger and bigger it became more and more complex. Now when any movement starts growing it becomes increasingly lucrative. It becomes economic. It increasingly becomes a part of the social structure - part of the economy, part of the body politic. Once people become invested in something, either emotionally or economically, it takes on a life of its own. The institution or idea - in this case the church - gets tied up with the personal and economic success of individual people and groups. Its success or failure meaning success or failure for these people, their businesses, organisations and families.

So, let's take the issue of relics. The blood of Christ. A piece of the true cross. The bones of this saint or that saint. As the church grows the market for such items becomes bigger and bigger. People and churches can make money displaying and selling them. So such items are found and displayed. Some may be genuine items - others may be frauds and knockoffs. However, people want to believe, and people also want to make money. So the relics keep being "discovered" and the people keep flocking to see them, and the economy keeps rolling.

Now as this goes on inconsistencies arise. As more and more relics get discovered it reaches a point where some relics contradict other relics. So you may have one church claiming to have found the tomb of, let's say, John the Baptist. Yet another church, in some distant location, may already claim to have the head of John the Baptist on display. With the actual Catholic Church it reached the point where there were countless duplicates of the exact same relic. Proving simply by basic logic that some, if not most, were indeed not relics at all. It was such inconsistencies that helped pave the way for the Reformation.

Now you can imagine a scene in medieval Europe. With one person, starting to get sceptical of what he's expected to believe, stating; "You know what, I don't think these are the bones of John the Baptist". And another guy then replying; "C'mon, so you're saying all the priests in the Catholic Church are part of some vast conspiracy to deceive us?"

Now, of course, in a way the second person is right. There isn't a vast organised conspiracy creating all these fraudulent relics. However, at the same time there kind of is a vast conspiracy. It's just that priests don't need to be told to lie about this or that. Their behaviour is dictated by the economic and social situation they find themselves in. If they're making a living as a priest it's unlikely they're going to rock the boat by biting the hand that feeds them, even if deep down they can see the inconsistencies just as much as everyone else. And if one does have a pang of conscience too strong to keep quiet, then that person will be driven from their profession pretty quickly by other priests that fear the economic repercussions of that one honest priest's actions.

So it just all keeps rolling on for economic and political reasons - the truth takes a back seat to realpolitik. The priests and true-believers have a vested interest in maintaining the system. The King and other aristocrats need their taxes, and therefore the support of the Church - and everyone just plays ball for the sheer practicality of it. Any criticism that does come, generally comes from people outside of the system (or the repressed within it).

So; the institution/social structure develops organically. The errors, lies and criminality likewise develop organically too. And when these errors and problems are challenged the structure defends itself organically.

To me this is similar to what we have with NASA and space exploration today. On the one hand statements are made claiming that we can't get past the Van Allen radiation belt, yet at the same time we're led to believe that man has been to the Moon. An obvious contradiction. An inconsistency that it's easy for someone like me, who's outside the system, to point out. However, people within the system - scientists, teachers, academics, etc - have to simply ignore this and pretend the inconsistency doesn't exist, or if pushed, make some kind of special pleading for it.

Now these people aren't necessarily part of some dark conspiracy. They're just fearful for their jobs, their reputation, the loss of their social status. It's simply not in their practical interest to acknowledge such things. They have bills to pay and families to feed. So the errors and frauds remain and accumulate. Each successive generation paying lip service to more and more error. Or, in the case of true believers, simply taking as fact things for which they have no evidence, or understanding of.

Anyway, I've digressed quite a bit from the original purpose of this article. Which I'll try to get back to - and that is; what would happen if serious evidence came to light challenging the prevailing worldview?

I've been trying to imagine a similar, conceptual situation to envision what could happen. I'm labelling this The Endless Forest.

Imagine there's a group of people that live at the centre of a huge, vast continent, situated in a huge and equally vast ocean. Now this continent is completely covered in forest, and is so huge that this group of people have never even reached the coast. No one has seen the seaside or the ocean. It's simply a concept they have no knowledge of. All they know is dense, seemingly unending forest.

Now what worldview would these people have? How would they envision their universe? It wouldn't be hard to imagine, even if we just do so hypothetically, that these people would come to envision their universe as just endless forest. Just as we have a vision of infinite space in mind when we conjure the word universe, they may similarly have a vision of infinite forest when they contemplate the entirety of their reality.

So what would happen if some of these people actually reached the coast and saw the boundless ocean for the very first time? How much of a shock would it be? How much would it shake their worldview? And what response would they get from the people back home when they tried to describe their tale?

Again, I wonder would the majority of people even be told. Let's say these intrepid explorers that have reached the edge of their world island return to their civilisation. I imagine the leaders of their respective community would be the first to speak with them. I imagine these leaders would also find it hard to comprehend what it was they were being told. Would they even believe it without firsthand experience? Imagine how serious it would all seem? What if it contradicted well held religious beliefs? Or contradicted the views of the intelligentsia and the leading class?

Of course, it's possible that every member of society would be allowed to know about this new world-changing discovery straight away, as soon as the explorers returned. However, I think it's also just as likely, if not more likely, that most wouldn't be deemed privy to such knowledge. I base this reasoning simply on my observations of most social hierarchies.

For example, if we look at the most basic - the family. Adults generally withhold a lot of knowledge from their children. Normally with the child's best intentions at heart. If a parent is struggling to pay the mortgage they may keep this information from the child - partly because the child simply isn't in the position to help tackle this problem, but also, more importantly, to save the child from the unnecessary worry that would come with knowing such information. In fact, in the past, a man would often even keep such information from his wife. Again the hierarchy; man > woman > children.

Another example is the workplace. Even in mundane professions such as shop or factory work knowledge hierarchies are easily observed. If there's an event or incident that has took place managers and other higher-ups will often huddle together in the office discussing the important information. Meanwhile the rest of the workforce is left out of the loop on the shop floor, wondering what's going on. Even the dullest of information is often guarded with passion by people invested in the hierarchy they're embedded in. Just think how many times you may have asked a simple question at work only to be told "that doesn't concern you"  - even though the information is often utterly mundane.

So I would guess that something as grand as the realisation that there was something vast and unimaginable beyond the forest would be equally restricted to the upper echelons of the social hierarchy. I would imagine that the people deemed important enough to discuss such things would speak privately about this new information, and make plans for further exploration and research to get a better grasp of what exactly was going on. They would leave the education of the people lower down til a later date. They might not even consider it necessary in the immediate future.

This would be the accidental beginnings of a deception. How long would such a deception continue? And to what lengths would people then go to maintain this deception once it's in full flow and people are fully invested in this new status quo?

Earth Agnostic: The Black & White Marble

In this article I'm going to talk about the geographer, politician and writer Sir Halford Mackinder (1861 - 1947).

It's largely due to Mackinder that the subject of Geography became a standard academic discipline. Before Mackinder geography generally wasn't taught as a separate subject. It was his zeal and passion for the subject that led to it being afforded its current status.

Reading up on this promotion of geography by Mackinder I found myself becoming a little bit sceptical, and I couldn't help but wonder if geography was specifically lifted to its higher status as part of some effort to promote a certain view of the world to people going through the education system. Of course, this is purely speculation on my part, and it could well be quite unfounded. However, it does occur to me that of all the subjects on the curriculum geography is possibly the least useful and the most speculative (my apologies to any geography teachers that may be reading). Most of the serious stuff seems to already be covered by the other sciences - and what's left is largely big on theory with little actual proof.

For example, geography is generally where we learn about;

• Climate Change
• Global Warming
• Over-Population
• Farming and Sustainability
• Conservation
• Plate tectonics
• The Structure of the Earth (Inner/Outer Core, Mantle, etc)
• Ice Ages and Glaciation

Now there are other less contentious topics that are part of the subject, and this is a bit of a selective list on my part. However, it does show that it's the perfect lesson for shaping a person's view of the world they live in. The first five topics on the list are quite controversial, politically charged topics. And the last three, though more in the realms of actual science, are also quite speculative. Do we really know what's deep beneath the Earth's surface? How far down have we actually been? And, of course, Ice Ages and Glaciation overlap quite heavily with 'climate change' science.

In fact, I remember as a child learning about these topics and believing it all wholeheartedly. They were taught as fact, not theory or opinion. I remember learning about things such as acid rain and rising sea levels and being genuinely fearful of the consequences for the world, myself and my family. The fear of doomsday-style catastrophism was imbibed in me quite strongly as I recall. Along with the guilt of being such a profligate drain on the planet and its resources.

Now that I'm older, and have realised that things such as "Climate Change" aren't as cut and dried as they were first presented, it's hard not to see this aspect of my education as little more than propaganda. Now I'm sure my teachers didn't see it this way, and I'm guessing they genuinely believed in what they were teaching - or at least feigned the belief needed to tick the boxes of the school curriculum. Either way though I'm fairly certain it taught me at the time to believe and not to think.

Moving back to Mackinder though, one thing I found which was quite interesting is the following. It's a photograph of a globe which appeared in his book Britain and the British seas (1902). I found the picture very striking at first as it appeared very similar to modern depictions of the globe. It could almost be a black & white NASA picture.

Although it's presumably just a photograph of a model globe, it's been photographed in such a way as to give the impression of something much closer to the reality. It's quite an impressive image. I think I'll dub it the Black & White Marble.

Another interesting fact about Mackinder is that he more or less invented the discipline of geopolitics. He was the originator of a theory called The Geographical Pivot of History. In this theory he states that whoever controls the area of land labelled the Pivot Area (see diagram below), which pretty much seems to approximate to Russia from what I call tell, by extension controls the world. Or the World Island as Mackinder would often label it. He believed that in order to control this Pivot area (now more commonly called the Heartland area) it was first necessary to control the arching corridor surrounding it, sometimes labelled the Inner Crescent.

He famously coined the following phrase;

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island commands the world."

It was this theory, pioneered by Mackinder, that later led to ideas such as the Global Chessboard, and this fixation with Eurasia we often get from modern geopolitical strategists.

In fact, I first came across Mackinder in a book I recently read titled A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton. It contains the following comment made following a talk given by Mackinder;

..Mr Spencer Wilkinson, lamented the absence of Cabinet ministers among the audience. They could learn, he suggested, from Mackinder's explanation that 'whereas only half a century ago statesmen played on a few squares of the chess-board of which the remainder was vacant, in the present day the world is an enclosed chess-board, and every movement of the statesman must take account of all the squares in it'.

Anyone familiar with this blog may recall that I've mentioned Russia and the Arctic Seas before. Speculating that there may be modern mysteries lurking there. So it's interesting that the same area of the world was of similar focus in these earlier works.

Finally, I should also mention that Mackinder was something of a believer in the idea that eventually we'd see a single one world government. Though this sort of thinking was de rigueur for progressives at that time, it seems worth making a note of. In fact, it's hard not to see in Mackinder one of the architects of the modern world.