Consciousness is a Map. Wandering Makes it Bigger.

  • 500 million years ago. The birth of navigation. Jawless fish develop the medial palium - a part of the brain that facilitates spatial learning, and a homolog of the modern-day hippocampus.
  • 350 million years ago. Land race. Medial palium size expands rapidly as amphibians and reptiles leave the oceans to explore the land, demanding greater spatial learning abilities. Also, early developments related to the limbic system likely enhance their sensitivity and responsiveness to environmental cues, laying the groundwork for more complex emotional and behavioral adaptations."
  • 150 million years ago. Taking to the skies. Migratory birds develop enlarged hippocampi to navigate over incredible distances, showing an evolutionary advantage for spatial intelligence in large-range species. Mammals also develop more sophisticated limbic systems, making them capable of forming social bonds and learning/memory.
  • 60 million years ago. Mammals on the go. Wanderer species like elephants, wolves, and big cats evolve expanded mammalian hippocampi allowing for detailed mapping and stronger social memory. For these species, range=memory=survival.
  • 15 million years ago. Apes on the scene. Early apes wander across large territories, remembering the season and location of fruiting trees and other resources, and developing complex social dynamics.
  • 2 million years ago. Homo Erectus. The hippocampi and pre-frontal cortexes of our early ancestors continue to grow as we expand our range and social skills, tracking seasonal resources and hunting grounds across large areas.
  • 100,000 years ago. Cartographers of Consciousness. Physiologically modern humans transmit knowledge through language, fine-tuning the hippocampus for symbolic thought and beginning to expand our maps of the world both external and internal. We live by hunting and gathering, both of which are underpinned by wandering.
  • 11,700 years ago. Wandering diminishes. After millennia of wandering as a survival strategy, as the climate stabilizes at the end of the last ice age, more and more humans are domesticated by grain, beginning to build sedentary civilizations which do not require wandering for sustenance.
  • 3,700 years ago. Gilgamesh and Enkidu. One of the oldest recorded stories is of King Gilgamesh, who breaks free of the confines of civilization and meets his god-touched twin in the forest. This wild man is called Enkidu, and he represents the opposite of Gilgamesh, but also his bridge to a deeper understanding of himself. All undergirded by wandering.
  • 3,300 years ago. 40 years of wandering. The Israelites are cast out of Egypt, and spend 40 years wandering in the desert. During this time they are tested, purified, and given the laws by which they will live.
  • 2559 years ago (534 bce). Life is Suffering. After sneaking out of his palace and experiencing the four sights, Siddhartha Gautama leaves his palace and spends 6 years as a wandering ascetic in search of understanding. After his awakening, he will spend 50 years wandering northern India sharing his teachings.
  • 2,000 years ago. Carriers of the flame. As civilization flourishes, various groups around the globe, like the Bedouin, the Inuit, and the Mongols maintain the old ways, ranging across hundreds if not thousands of miles and increasingly coming into tension with the sedentary folk who saw them as a threat.
  • 1992 years ago (33 ce). Radical acceptance. Jesus of Nazareth is executed for wandering around and preaching equality and brotherly love, presenting a cogent counter-strategy to the physical and emotional yolking of the populace by the owners of the proto-industrial system.
  • 1920 years ago (105 ce). The Invention of Paper. Cai Lun dramatically improves the production of paper and opens the door to abundant writing. This is a game changer for humanity, because it allows for the passage of finely-worked ideas to pass from brain to brain through time and space. The mental mapping of reality this opens the door to... honestly I'm having a hard time articulating the importance of this on how we think and act. We're talking about vastly more complex nodal structures. At some substantial cost (affiliate link).
  • 1845 years ago (180 ce). Wandering by road and sail. This date marks the end of the Pax Romana and the height of Rome's network of highways and ships. This transportation infrastructure makes it easier to wander further and faster, but within human systems, not through the bush. Very different.
  • 1598 years ago (427 ce). Wandering library. Nalanda Mahavira opens in Eastern India. Considered to be one of the greatest centers of learning in the ancient world, and probably the first residential university in history. It also contains a library where monks and scholars can freely explore thousands of texts, creating an early intermodal-wandering context, in which the wanderer can explore the stacks in physical reality, and the texts in the mental plane.
  • 1455 years ago (570 ce). Living on a bigger map. Muhammad is born in Mecca. The boy becomes an orphan at age six, and passes through several different caregivers before ending up with his uncle, a merchant, who takes him to Syria and beyond, exposing him to different customs and peoples and ideas and pushing him to live on a bigger map. Muhammad's complex mind, drenched in exploration, will initiate one of earth's greatest religions, and he will spend the later part of his life wandering and sharing his message, giving his final sermon in 632ce.
  • 900 years ago. Differentiated wandering. As the density of civilization increases, more individual wealth and greater infrastructure and trade between distant ports spurs the development of different forms of wandering. Nomads, Pilgrims, and wizards begin to emerge as distinct types, all focused on different goals. Increasingly, humans can wander on the road, rather than through the bush. Very different.
  • 730 years ago (1295 ce). The Silk Road. Marco Polo returns to Venice after 24 years of exploring and diplomacy in Asia. His account of his travels, accurate or not, will explode in the brains of minds across early-modern Europe, helping the entire continent to imagine lives in other places, and live on a bigger map. This book is great PR for the Silk Road, and spurs 7 centuries of increasingly dense trade between the East and West.
  • 689 years ago (1336 ce). Exploring inside and out. The poet and scholar Petrarch climbs Mount Ventoux just because it's there. At the top of the mountain, he reads from Augustine, and turns his attention from the external to the internal. This moment will come to symbolize the birth of the Renaissance, spurred on by the plague and the printing press. Petrarch will become known as the first tourist, the first mountaineer, and the father of humanism.
  • 676 years ago (1349 ce). The Black Death. Bubonic plague has spread throughout Europe, and roughly half the population will disappear over the course of a few years. This dramatically improves the bargaining power of the peasantry, causing profound shifts in consciousness and leading to wave after wave of popular rebellion.
  • 600 years ago. The Age of Sail. Spurred by competition for spices and other resources, the Portuguese begin building and refining ships purpose-built for exploration. These caravels draw on wisdom from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to help the Portuguese, and later other European powers, to 'wander' around the globe, discovering new peoples, ports, and markets. This exploration will last for centuries, produce unfathomable misery, and a reasonable amount of joy, and give rise to the industrial society that we live in today.
  • 585 years ago (1440 ce). Wandering of the minds. Gutey invents his printing press and breaks down a wall that the church held in place for 1,000 years. Information has just become substantially harder to control, allowing for a rapid expansion of consciousness. In concert with the structural changes and mass trauma of The Black Death 100 years earlier, the printing press would spur an outpouring of thought that would become known as the European Renaissance, in which a million hands all collectively wandered outwards into the dark, building theories of rationality and scientific rigor which propelled us into the modern age.
  • 508 years ago (1517 ce). Science is born from magic. Paracelsus embarks on his years of wandering across Europe, in search of universal understanding. He studies astrology, alchemy, medicine, and more. He lives with miners to learn about minerals and begins a hands-on experimental process that - along with other contributors - will eventually become known as the scientific method. Note. But one example of how the scientific method would evolve from esoteric pursuits.
  • 461 years ago (1564 ce). The seahorse. The important human anatomist Julius Caesar Aranzi first describes the part of the brain known as the hippocampus. He waivers between calling it the silkworm or the seahorse. Seahorse wins out.
  • 196 years ago (1829 ce). The shrinking world. The Rainhill trials take place to decide what sort of locomotive will connect Liverpool and Manchester via steel rail. The coal-fired steam engine Rocket wins the competition and a year later regular train service begins between the two cities, marking the first inter-city railroad. People didn't know if they'd be able to breath on a train traveling 30 miles per hour, and now that people could have breakfast in Liverpool and lunch in Manchester, it mattered that they both be on the same time. The tyranny of the clock begins. In the years to follow, railroads will explode around the world, and the same steam technology will drive faster, larger, and more comfortable ships, making it feasible for people to wander with considerably more speed and ease across land and sea.
  • 162 years ago (1863). Experience the city. Charles Baudelaire introduces the idea of the flâneur in his essay The Painter of Modern Life. This highly-developed concept of wandering in urban contexts will influence impressionism, modernism, and sociologists and urbanists of the 20th century.
  • 57 years ago (1968 ce). Almost. Spurred on by the political message of Guy DeBord and the Situationist International, revolutions almost break out across the world. Wandering is at the heart of the Situationist's philosophy which seeks to let go of the logical and routine, inviting play and direct experience, without the interference of the high priests of the new church on Fleet Street and Madison Avenue.
  • 28 years ago (1997 ce). Personal beginnings. The author graduates from high school in Alaska and begins wandering in earnest.
  • Today. DID YOU WANDER?

"Love your neighbor as yourself." - Book of Mark
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