Road to Tenochtitlan

     "Interesting" is always occurring. Whether you prefer technological advancements, medical miracles, archaeological digs, or political maneuverings, the world is full of coincidences, twisting plots, and ironic actions.
     Christopher Columbus is usually credited with discovering the New World in 1492. Most textbooks ignore the suspected Viking expeditions, stories of shipwrecked sailors, and historic possibilities that China, Rome, and Greece had access to the Western Hemisphere, never mind the estimated 20-60 million people already populating the Americas before Columbus. When arriving on an island somewhere in the Caribbean, Columbus concluded that he had arrived in the Eastern Hemisphere, incorrectly assuming this "New World" was Asia. At this time the Spanish were competing with the Portuguese for a trade empire and sought riches in this new land. Thus, the conquistadors arrived in ships with gun powder weaponry intent on dominating a heavily populated continent. Suspecting this new land to be filled with gold, the Spanish traipsed through the continent to encounter several powerful civilizations.
     Because of the successful obliteration of pre-Colombian societies, all sorts of Spanish-sponsored myths have sprung up that alter accurate historical insights. Despite the popularity of the belief that Moctezuma announced Hernando Cortes as an anthropomorphized form of Quetzalcoatl, a god, the Aztec's understood their own superiority over their Spanish guests and believed themselves safe in the strength of their numeric advantage, imperial dominance, and secure military might. The Spaniards, with a total army of about a thousdand men, only succeeded in their conquest by turning vast numbers of indigenous groups against the Aztec overlords.

     The Spanish efforts were nearly entirely focused on financial accumulation in the suspected, readily available quantities of gold, but the first decades of interaction between the Old and New worlds saw "wealth" mainly through slavery. Interestingly, if the natives of South America had treated their European guests in the sixteenth century the same way as their North American brethren had repelled the Baltic colonists in the ninth century, the difficulty of an army traversing the Atlantic en mass would have severely limited the effectiveness of the European New World domination, but that is not what happened.
     History is filled with "what if's" that will never be answered. Circumstances, timing, coincidence, and opportunities either unravel or weave the tapestry of the past whose threads entangle the present with gifts, curses, and curiosities. Predictions, estimates, and theories only go so far in determining the path the future treads. Action is what marks the pages of history, inspires the glorious monuments of fleeting empires, and erases the smoldering ruins of change to give way for new greatness.
     Fear is an ally or an enemy, but he chooses a side just as surely as time marches on. Advance or defend - the choice is yours, but history remembers courage even in defeat.


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Agatha Tyche

Diamond-Water Paradox

     The Diamond-Water paradox embodied the transformation of Europe from mercantilism to be one of the cornerstones to modern capitalistic economic theory. Supply and Demand are assumed  to be obviously coupled in this century, but all ideas are revolutionary at some point. Originating in the eighteenth century, the Diamond-Water paradox stated a counter example to the then prominent Mercantilism theory of absolute value of objects by stating a man dying of thirst in a desert would trade the most valuable diamond in the world for water because the diamond, at that moment, was worthless to him since it could not save his life.
     Items are worth their value - which is dependent upon the situation. As the human population continues to increase, water consumption around the world, especially in areas with a low water table, has reached levels too high for underground reservoirs to maintain. Los Angelos, United States is the third largest city, but all of its water is siphoned from the Colorado River. This aqueduct has significantly escalated desertification in the southern United States and northern Mexico. The Sahara's increasing populations to the south, notably Nigeria, and to the north in Libya and Egypt.

     In two hundreds years the paradox has become truth. While diamonds are less common than water, the value and utility of the most necessary liquid is constantly being evaluated. The world worries about water, yet some oases retain wasteful levels of overuse, particularly the suburbs of industrialized nations.
     Much like the man dying of thirst in the desert who is willing to trade all his wealth for only a glass of water, the world population may soon find out how valuable fresh water is. Unfortunately, as with so much else, few people will realize our doomed trajectory until the cliff's edge is already behind us. That is for the next decade of minds to resolve. Today merely eat, drink, and be merry. The prevention of tomorrow's problems requires too much inconvenience today.
     Efficiency, practicality, and forethought will greatly extend current water reserves, but ignorance and waste has long been the defeat of mankind.


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Agatha Tyche