Staring you in the face

[Mythobeast]

Every now and then, I realize that the true meaning of a word has been staring me in the face my whole life.

A couple of days ago I learned the Japanese word for the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of the kanji for earth-middle-sea. I thought "why is it the sea of Middle Earth?" Right. Medium Terrain. Ever since mankind figured out boats, it's been the body of water in the middle of civilization.

This is one of the things that a lot of fantasy writers get wrong. Bodies of water don't separate empires (the way George R. R. Martin did it), they connect them. Over-sea trade routes are easier than over-land trade routes. When you watch the histories of the spread of empires, many of them spread around the edge of the Mediterranean.

 

[gbhunt]

Neat. I love perspective. And you only have to watch something like the whale migration, from the Antarctic, past Australia and up as far as Tonga, and the millions of shearwaters flying south past New Caledonia to see that humans aren't the only ones using the ocean currents and winds. Although very few people are allowed to fly into Australia at the moment, we are meeting people regularly who have sailed in on their private yachts, some from as far as North America. And, after six weeks at sea, they STILL have to go into a hotel for 2 weeks' quarantine. Which, based on the performance of our quarantine hotels, might be a good way of catching Covid!