Rhodes Hard Change

     Everything man has ever created has been from this earth. The value of our creations depends upon the skill of creation and the cost of the material which is dependent on its usefulness and scarcity. Through human history, gemstones have proven valuable for both reasons being difficult to find and procure and widely applicable. Of all the gems, diamonds capture the modern mind most severely, but the unbreakable, clear crystal's first use was to sharpen stone weapons to keep mankind alive.
     Diamond mining was underway in India by the 300s B.C. and were traded throughout the world for millenia. By the 1700s Indian mine production faltered and encouraged travelers to seek mines elsewhere - something never done before. By 1725 Brazil became the new producer of the world's diamonds and continued producing under 50,000 carats a year. By 1870 Brazil's production had plateaued at 200,000 carats annually. In 1866 a 21 carat diamond was discovered in a stream bed in South Africa and created a mining boom that continued through the last three centuries. In the first ten years after mining began in South Africa, global production doubled, and by 1882 more diamonds had entered the market than had existed for 2,000 years.
   An asthmatic teenager from England who traveled to South Africa for his health in  1871 and, leaving his brother's cotton farm, realized the potential from these new, enormously productive mines. Combining small mining rights he had purchased with a friend over the years, he established, De Beers Mining Company in 1880. By 1888 he had purchased Kimberly Central Diamond Mining Company for $25 million. A few years later De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd controlled 90% of global diamond production.

     With diamond production escalating faster than market demands, prices crashed, but Rhodes, a clever businessman, used his dominance of the production market to secure escalated sales prices through so release of stockpiled reserves. His production and reserve monopoly made this strategy successful in controlling the market and effectively established a vertical monopoly as Rockefeller achieved with oil production in America in the same period.
     Aside from his business accomplishments, Rhodes gained several political offices of the Cape Colony in South Africa. An extremely motivated imperialist, Rhodes pushed for northern expansion into the interior and created tension with native tribes, Boers, and other imperialist powers including Portugal, Germany, and Belguim. His press northward to control the mineral rights of Africa's interior was a significant motivator to the 1884 Berlin Conference, the "Scramble for Africa" that drew boundaries on African lands for European empires.
     A political businessman of extreme wealth, Rhodes used his effectively unlimited mineral rights to expand British influence northward, and he sought to establish a Red Line railroad from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt to connect the continents lands. Though unsuccessful with his imperialist goals, his other successes made him a made of wealth and renown. At his death in 1902 his will donated much of his money to established the Rhodes scholarship which allowed promising Germans, Americans, and British opportunity to study at Oxford University "regardless of race" effectively opening the scholarship to native Africans in the decades to follow.
     Buried in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) Rhodes's legacy has soured over the century. His De Beers mines have lost the absolute monopoly of the market, the British Empire has relinquished her African colonies, and his political history is now seen as oppressive and racist. None the less, Rhodes started from nothing and used his own skill, ingenuity, and opportunities to become one of the most successful businessmen in the late nineteenth century and a testament to the driving energy of the British Empire.


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Agatha Tyche

Word versus Word

     While conquering the world, Alexander’s army relied on the phalanx formations for military movement forcing each man to rely on the defense of the man beside him; despite the army’s reliance on each other, after the fall of the Persian Empire, Alexander’s leaders’ phalanx-alliance split and began to fall in on itself as the enemy beside became more deadly than the enemy ahead. An excellent, early example of this mounting distrust and unease is Alexander's suspicion and ultimate execution of his heretofore trusted general Philotas. Philotas’ alleged conspiracy demonstrates the conflicts Alexander faced after the fall of the Persian empire. The accounts of this event vary in their presentations in ancient sources which create various interpretations of the occurrence. Key surviving ancient records include those of Plutarch, Quintus Curius Rufus, and Arrian which mostly confirm the reliability of the event.
     Plutarch primarily focuses on Philotas’ character, but clearly describes the order in which the conspiracy was discovered. During his examination of the trial, Plutarch only mentions evidence that had been well established through Philotas’ mistress’s secret reports to Alexander, who endured Philotas’ insults in silence. The consequences of Philotas’ trial resulted in Parmenion’s execution. Alexander’s underhanded elimination of two very prominent officers instilled a previously unknown fear in his remaining commanders. A further catalyst for this fear was Alexander’s murder of Cleitus shortly after this incident.
     Since Quintus Curius Rufus focused mainly on the social and political portions of Alexander’s conquests, he provides a very descriptive analysis of the events surrounding Philotas’ trial. Like Plutarch, Rufus initiates the conspiracy plot with Dimnos’ confession to his homosexual lover. This key information is brought to Philotas’ attention but is rejected due to the unreliability of its source.1 Because of the delay in Alexander’s reception of the conspiratory information, he charged Philotas with treason. A secret meeting afterward confirmed Philotas’ guilt through a confession under torture. When brought on trial already in chains, Philotas unsuccessfully defended himself against hateful attacks by other generals and Alexander himself. Although Philotas was accused of treason and executed, none of the other conspirators ever named Philotas as being involved.2
     After concluding the guilt of Philotas and the others, the conspirators were stoned, Parmenion was assassinated, and Alexander Lyncestes was executed after three years of imprisonment.3 The quick verdict and sketchy evidence used in Philotas’ conviction later affected different conspirators’ approach to both assassinating and warning Alexander, notably in the example of the basileus paiges.
     Quintus Curius Rufus provides several reasons which motivated the mutinous plots against Alexander. While on trial Hegalochus, a conspirator with the paiges, shouted his desire to eliminate Alexander for the following: Alexander’s adoption of Persian mannerisms, his belittling of Philip II’s and the army’s contributions, the oppression Alexander enforced on the Macedonian victors of his conquest while allowing the losers a lighter yoke of burden, and Alexander’s demand of prokinesis. With the conquest of Persia complete, Alexander began acting like a master over slaves which free Macedonians naturally rejected.
     While Plutarch focuses on character and Quintus Curius Rufus studies social and political factors, Arrian preserves a militaristic viewpoint which minimizes his comments on Philotas’ trial but allows for a fuller analysis of the effects on the army as the conspiracies continued. Philotas had commanded a large portion of the Companion cavalry, but after his execution, Alexander no longer permitted any one general to control such a large portion of his troops and consequently split Philotas’ old squadrons between Hephastion and Cleitus the Black.
     The consistency throughout the sources of Alexander’s learning of the plot assists in its factuality; modern authors concur. Although the causes for the conspiracies mesh nicely in the ancient sources, a Macedonian social tradition that escapes ancient authors’ attention; Macedonian kings normally died by assassination or in battle. This bloody tradition helped motivate Alexander’s later paranoia about conspiracy.4 As Alexander went further east, the toils of the campaign increased while the rewards shrunk. The resulting rigors inflamed resentment in the army.
     Alexander changed several policies in the wake of Philotas’ trial. His paranoia began to express itself both through Philotas’ death as well as Parmenion’s, which was more for what might be done than any disloyal action previous to the assassination. This paranoid killing spree eventually eliminated all capable heirs to Alexander’s throne and terrified the remaining commanders into submission since outspokenness against Alexander meant risking his anger. Modern authors also agree with the ancients that Alexander’s mistrust of generals forced him to break military units further among commanders to minimize the impact a general would have in attempts to oust Alexander.
     Each ancient source contributes to the overall comprehension of Philotas’ trial through different author’s focuses on varied topics. Plutarch contributes significantly in understanding Philotas’ character and interaction with the other officers around him. While explaining the history leading up to the event with sufficient detail, Plutarch neglects the conflicts of the trial itself. Quintus Curius Rufus thoroughly explains each step progressively throughout the event but lacks any defined consequences other than the immediate. Arrian, the opposite of Quintus Curius Rufus, neatly generalizes the entire proceedings up to Philotas’ execution and carefully analyzes the results of the verdict both on the army as a whole as well as on Alexander himself. By neglecting even one of these sources in analyzing any event in Alexander’s life, key information is lost and bias in the authors’ focus is emphasized whether in reference to politics, military, or psychology.

     History is composed of the lives and actions of billions of people. Analysis of history should call upon multiple sources and different accounts wherever possible to make full use the lessons of the past have on the present.

1 Rufus and Plutarch concur on the order of events leading up to Philotas’ trial. Philotas rejected the information because it came from the brother of a male prostitute during a quarrel between lovers.
2 Alexander’s main accusation of Philotas was guilt through silence. Philotas knew of his condemnation before the verdict since he gave his defense in chains, and Alexander, while present for the accusations, left during Philotas’ defense, signifying a lack of an aquittal.
3 Since “Philip was safer in combat than in the theatre: often avoiding the hands of his enemies, he could not escape those of his own people,” Alexander attempted to protect himself from possible threats.
4 Because “Great men have often met their ends at the hands of insignificant agents or even for relatively minor causes,” Alexander can be justified for executing Philotas for negligence.

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Agatha Tyche

Thirst for Glory

     In The Illiad Achilles agrees to fight alongside Agnememnon's Greek coalition against Troy to obtain eternal fame, glory, immortality. In The Aeneid Achilles is met after centuries in the afterlife and confesses that if he had known how empty victories were after death, he would have lived as long as possible. Despite that advice, Horatio Nelson strong of body, mind, and heart still sought battlefield victory to earn a place in the annals of history and the admiration of their fellow British subjects.
     Born into an unremarkable but comfortable household, Horatio Nelson used family connections to join a British naval ship at twelve where he traveled to the Indian Ocean and the Arctic. After experience in the West Indies during the American Revolutionary War, he was promoted to lieutenant and later captain. His exploits were not unsuccessful but were unpopular because his enforcement of the Navigation Act hurt the incomes of other British captains involved in war smuggling with American merchants. At this rejection from fellow officers, Nelson's low morale led him to his wife who returned with him to England while wasting the time away between British involvement in the American and French Revolutions.
     Losing his right eye at Calvi in 1794 and his right arm at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, Nelson captained the Agnememnon through the Mediterranean. At Cape St. Vincent, Nelson led an attack against a fleet of twenty-seven Spanish ships and alone fought off seven ships before his allies could reach the line.
One of the best examples of his genius and exploitation of his contemporaries's expectations, the Battle of the Nile in 1798 had Nelson's fleet decimate Napoleon's anchored ships and eliminated the French attempt to control the Suez Canal. A disaster for the French, Nelson's brilliant attack forced Napoleon to return to France without his army and without victory.
     From a social standpoint, Nelson's most controversial brash act came while stationed at Napels shortly after the Battle of the Nile where he met Emma, his soul-mate mistress. By 1801 they were living together and had a daughter, but Nelson never divorced his wife. Despite his personal life's scandal, one of his most famous audacious acts occurred at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Putting a telescope to his blind eye, he announced that he could not see the order to retreat. Victory in the resulting battle from this bold move gained him enormous popularity with the British public but created some tension with his high command.
     After a long trans-Atlantic chase for the Spanish Armada, Nelson's fleet blockaded a large French-Spanish fleet at Cadiz, Spain. Under severe beratement by Napoleon and with the threat of losing command, the French Admiral Pierre Villeneuve sailed to meet Nelson. Outnumbered and with a weak wind, the British ships split into two columns and attacked the French-Spanish fleets head-on. Once the line broke, the British leads raked the enemy and divided the French column into three segments. The British had 27 ships but suffered no casualties against a combined French-Spanish navy of 33 ships that suffered seventeen captured and one sunk. Though Nelson lost his life in the battle, his reputation as a brilliant naval commander and the results of the Battle of Trafalgar secured British safety from a Napoleon invasion and gave them undisputed dominance of the sea for a full century.

     The legend of Admiral Nelson can never be separated from the Battle of Trafalgar. When news of the victory reached England on November 5, 1805, emotions mixed triumph with the loss of Nelson. Preserved in brandy, Nelson's body was returned to England where unprecedented, enormous crowds marched for his funeral. His body was laid to rest in an ebony sarcophagus originally commissioned by King Henry VIII three centuries earlier in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
     Despite poor ongoing reports on the continent, the naval battle secured Britain from invasion and helped lead to Napoleon's defeat. The destruction of the alliance navy decimated Napoleon's confidence in his naval forces which led him to attempt to beat Britain economically with the continental system. This economic warfare led to tension with Spain and Russia and incited the Peninsular War which significantly contributed to Napoleon's defeat.
     Aside from giving his country security for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar initiated the uncontested dominance of the British navy over oceanic traffic for over a century. This undisputed naval power enabled the blossoming of the great British Empire under Queen Victoria so that the sun could never set over the vast holdings. "England demands that every man should do his duty." That is exactly what Nelson did.

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Agatha Tyche

Crowning Achievement

     With the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the loss of Roman political and educational traditions during the Dark Ages, conflict ignited with every coronation, declaration, and decree whether between kingdoms, peoples, or tribes. During some of the darkest days of the Dark Ages, Charles Martel, a Mayor of the Palace for the Frankish Merovingian kings, fought off a Muslim invasion force that kept lands north of modern Spain from Islamic control. The grandson of Charles Martel, Charlemagne (Charles the Great) eventually held the legitimate title of king and sought an expanse in control of European lands. A great conqueror from a family of competent leaders, Charlemagne earned a reputation as a man of ambition and  strong character and as a man who sought to establish a new permanent empire.
     The legacy of Charlemagne extends into history, religion, politics, education, and the nearly every conflict between the great powers of Europe over the last twelve hundred years. His influence resulted from the power of his birth, ambition of his mind, strength of his will, and conviction of his heart, but his lasting appeal grew from his title of "emperor" and the unification of a huge swathe of Europe under his reign. While in Rome securing the power of pope from dissenters, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as emperor. The Frankish kings had long been defenders and protectors of the pope, the Bishop of Rome, while Byzantine emperors placed their forces in conflict against the burgeoning Islamic caliphates. With the Frankish king at hand and the Byzantine emperor unreachable and uninterested, Leo III strategized to create an emperor in Europe and a powerful friend to the papacy.
     Charlemagne's coronation during Christmas mass in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome in 800 A.D. changed the future of the world macroscopically. For centuries, European rulers justified their claims to the throne by heredity linked to Charlemagne. To strengthen this connection in the minds of subjects and contestants to the throne, several emperors chose Christmas Day for their coronation ceremonies. The day, the most important Christian day after Easter, also emphasized that the ruler had the favor of God indicating that to rebel against a him was to go against God. Though many Holy Roman Emperors sought coronation by the pope in Rome, Charlemagne's crowning emphasized his dominance throughout the region at the time.

     Charlemagne's influence led others to mirror his example and flaunt their power in a way reflective of the past and strengthen the claim to power by drawing similarities to Charlemagne. His grandson, Charles the Bald, was also crowned in Rome on Christmas Day, 875, but died two years later. Otto II was crowned emperor in 967, the last true emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
     Other than those two men with strong bonds to Charlemagne and significant influence on the course of history, the other coronations seem almost inconsequential, but of thousands of individuals crowned through European history, few could pretend the prestige of Charlemagne's might. In the year 1000 A.D. Stephen I became the first king of Hungary at his Christmas coronation. Henry III of the Holy Roman Empire was crowned in 1046, and William I, the Conqueror, was crowned King of England in Westminster Abby in 1066 just months after the Battle of Hastings. With the Crusades becoming increasingly important, Boudouin I was crowned king of Jerusalem in 1100, Roger II earned crowning as king of Sicily in 1130.
     All these coronations of kings and emperors occurred on Christmas Day, but many coronations could not wait until Christmas because the ruler had to solidify power claims immediately to ward off rivals. As history wore on and Charlemagne's direct impact became diluted, fewer Christmas coronations were attempted, but Charles II was crowned King of Scotland in 1651. That so many were able to link their power to Charlemagne and Christendom is a testament to the legacy of European kingship.
     While Christmas is traditionally a religious celebration, men never stop living. Natural disasters, battles, and significant political events have all occurred on Christmas Day, just another day in the year. Clovis, King of the Franks, baptized himself on Christmas in 498. This event linked the Frankish realm to Rome and secured Christianity in Europe as a legitimate force in post-Roman politics. Without this Charlemagne would not have been crowned in Rome by a pope.
     Christmas is a special time of year and has been celebrated as the birth of Christ since the fourth century. This day marks the anniversary of Charlemagne's, Otto the Great's, William the Conqueror's, and Emporer Hirohito's coronations, the 1717 flood Deltawerken, and the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachav as General Secretary of the U.S.S.R. Nearly every country and culture celebrates Christmas in some fashion from religious services, religious holidays, gift exchanges, and seasonal traditions. May you all enjoy your holiday whenever you celebrate it.

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Agatha Tyche

Water Trains

     The cheapest way of shipping large quantities of marketable goods or military supplies is over water. Because of buoyancy reducing the object's weight, rivers are the bloodlines of civilization and ocean access is one of the most important factors in determining a nation's economic status. The United States has huge navigable coasts with protected harbors in the Atlantic Ocean for trade with Europe and Africa and the Pacific Ocean for trade with China, India, and Japan. The appreciation of ocean access has only become fully acknowledged recently. While ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and the Chinese all used waterways for shipping and military purposes, little is known if the ancients realized that trade is what created a nation's economic might and that trade is controlled through water.
     After European ascendance with colonies on every continent, England became a huge proponent of naval power. Though the Dutch East India Company established control over spice islands before the British, the British did it better, bigger, and longer. Controlling the oceans without a challenge for well over a century, the British demonstrated that oceanic power controlled trade and led to a prosperous empire.
     As the Industrial Revolution sparked the mass production of goods, producers needed to expand market reach to sell surpluses never conceived of before. Britain developed a man-controlled inland shipment system built around manipulation of rivers to aid shipping routes: canals. Within a few years, canals threaded over the English countryside from small supply villages to the massive factory hubs of the great cities. The United States joined in the canal race, and the Erie Canal, one of the longest ever built, demonstrated the vast improvements offered by these waterways. Before the Erie Canal, goods from the Great Lakes to New York City took two weeks on wagon roads. When the canal opened in 1825, shipping prices dropped to ten percent pre-opening price and the travel time halved.

     Mostly forgotten in the modern age because of the effectiveness, greater speed and decreased terrain limitations of the locomotive, canals changed the landscape of industrializing countries by easing trade and transport and developing lock systems. The lock system for canals leveled long stretches of ground that sped railway creation for trains just decades later.
     Canals still have an important impact on the global economy. The modern Suez Canal, completed in 1869, linked Britain with her Asian colonies, notably India. The British protected this artery from Napoleon and through both world wars. The other major modern canal, the Panama Canal, was built by the United States in 1914 to link the east and west coast of the country by halving the time of sailing around the Cape Horn. Both the Suez and Panama Canals are vital for international trade in the modern era while many smaller canals are now abandoned or only used as tourist attractions and for recreational use.
     Though the longevity of the canal boom was shorter than a human life time, the huge improvements on the speed and quantity of trade to previously isolated areas opened the world to the full effects of the Industrial Revolution and to the power of change. The canal made it possible for man to think of large-scale geological change to achieve his needs over the long term, and from that, civilization has not looked back. Though most of the tracks for the water trains have long been locked, the trade history still flows freely.


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Agatha Tyche

The African Guerrilla

     The character of leaders varies on the culture, period, and circumstance, but the greatest variable and determinant is the personal traits of the individual. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck is a remarkable figure as a leader in World War I while the rest of his life and further exploits have been criticized and his name removed from honorific tributes from street names to statues. Despite public backlash for personal affairs post mortem, the men who served under him on his World War I campaign, especially his Africans, flew from thousands of miles away to attend his funeral.
    Growing up in a Prussian military family, Lettow-Vorbeck began his career early and had experience in China and Africa before the War to End All Wars. Injured in the German West African (Namibia) uprisings in 1904, he gained fighting experience in the African jungles as well as knowledge of the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare against a larger, better equipped enemy. In 1914, just prior to the outbreak of war, Paull von Lettow-Vorbeck gained command of German East Africa (Tanzania). Ignoring a direct command not to mobilize for war, he organized his 250 Germans over the 2,500 native African Askari.
     The first true test of Vorbeck's ability to command outnumbered troops without hope of support or provision came when a British flotilla attacked Tanga with a force that outnumbered the defenders eight to one. Strategically retreating into the jungle and splitting the army into small fighting bands, the Germans successfully confused the enemy and forced their retreat. In all, the Britsh-Indian force suffered about 4,000 casualties to the defenders's fifteen Germans and the fifty-four Askaris. Thus began a four-year resistance by the only remaining German colonial force in Africa.
     Von Lettow-Vorbeck's strategy was simple. Since the German forces would not be able to defeat the huge British forces on the continent, the Germans would deny the British a victory of their own. This guerrilla process tied up nearly 100,000 Allied troops in a side-theater colonial war against fewer than 10,000 German troops without support of any kind. Continuing from his victory at Tanga, Lettow-Vorbeck split his forces and attacked British, Belgian, and Portuguese outposts and railways throughout East Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

     With no supplies reaching the Germans except those scavenged from the countryside and stolen in raids, by 1917 the Allied forces pinned Lettow-Vorbeck's forces down in an area that forced a battle while being outnumbered more than three to one. The Battle of Mahiwa was the first and only major confrontation the Germans and Askaris had against the Allied forces, but even pitched battle proved disasterous for the assailants. After careful scouting, Lettow-Vorbeck's 1,500 troops fought off a direct assault by 5,000 men then outflanked them and bayonet charged against machine gunners. In this battle, the Allies accumulated 3,000 casualties while the Germans suffered only 519.
     In September 1918 one of Lettow-Vorbeck's threen main armies was captured, but the German commander fought on for another two months. When word of the November 11 Armistice reached General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck by a British POW, the chivalrous leader dutifully surrendered to the surprised and relieved British. After four years of constant fighting without any support, relief, or resupply from his nation, Lettow-Vorbeck's German force never lost a battle and single-handedly made British exploits in Africa throughout the war shameful. His British captors allowed the Germans to go free but held the Askari soldiers in abysmal camps. Lettow-Vorbeck refused to return to Germany until his black soldiers were also released. Historians have credited much of his success throughout the war on Lettow-Vorbeck's treatment of his African soldiers. Promoting several natives to officer positions for performance, his reliance on native troops kept his army fitter than the European Allied forces and allowed the German force to exploit knowledge of the terrain and resources. Lettow-Vorbeck's skill, courage, tenacity, and honor earned him the respect of his British opponent, Jan Smuts.
     His return to Germany after the war saw huge support from the populace as they welcomed home an undefeated general in a lost war. Though Lettow-Vorbeck dabbled in politics, with the rise of Hitler's Nazi's he declined any position of power with verbal insults, only avoiding being executed because of his extreme popularity. Throughout World War II, he was kept until surveillance, but no action was taken against him.
     Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck returned to East Africa in 1953 where he was greeted by a group of his Askari veterans singing his regiment song and cheering. For his funeral in 1964, several of those same warriors were able to fly into Germany.
    An outstandingly persistent  man from Germany stood his ground on colonized soil in defiance of the massive enemy that threatened his nationalistic fervor. Never losing a battle, and surrendering undefeated, this German forced the Allies to commit huge numbers of troops to put down one of the most successful guerrilla rebellions in history. Though Lettow-Vorbeck's lost 2,000 men over the four years of the war, the Allies lost over 10,000 men, mostly due to the horrible arboviruses of the jungles of Africa. By using natives, the Germans suffered minorly compared to the Allies who suffered thirty casualties through sickness for every man in battle.
     In a war remembered for the inability of high command to learn the effects and techniques of modern war, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck stands high, undefeated, and as one of the most successful, adaptable generals of the twentieth century.


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Agatha Tyche

The Pen Is Mightier than the Sword

     The development of human language has been suspected of coinciding with the rise of complex social interactions and technological innovations. As geography, social context, and descriptions for everyday interactions entered into the language, a fuller, more complete world came into view to the inventors of those words. The English language has a strongly documented history of language development. Established as an Anglo-Germanic dialect, heavy Latin elements were interjected with the French conquest after 1066 until establishing a basic format for its modern style about six-hundred years ago. Other languages underwent similar changes with sentence structure, inflections, and vowel shifts influencing pronunciation, spelling, and social affairs.
     Debate on whether language affects perception or perception affects language has been studied, switched, and reverted multiple times over the last century, but a definitive agreement from both sides is that one does affect the other.
     In Namibia the BBC documented the Himba tribe's ability to specifically select minute differences in reds and browns but an almost non-existent ability to express differences in greens. A more documented case in linguistic expression of the visual world is the differentiation in Russian's words for lighter and darker shade. The terminology distinction cues the language user's brain to be more aware of minuscule tone variations. The conclusion of the color-linguistic study found that native Russian speakers were faster and more accurate in distinguishing light and dark blues compared to Latin and Germanic language users that do not have multiple words to describe colors.
     The origin of color perception to real world descriptions dates back to the mid-nineteenth century with Britain's William Gladstone. While reading through The Odyssey and The Illiad, he noticed Homer's odd descriptions of objects. The ocean is often described as "wine dark" and sheep are "violet." Curious, Gladstone tallied the use of color words in the original Greek and found that white, black, and red were the most used colors followed by yellow with almost no reference to green and no words for blue. In the decades since Gladstone's observation, other ancient cultures have been analyzed for color-describing terms. Blues are the last colors to be described by most cultures except ancient Egypt because of their unique ability to make blue dyes.
     The general consensus by linguists and psychologists is that man's ability to describe the world is directly related to his experience of it and vice versa. If there is not a word for a specific pigment, hue, or tone, that color cannot be distinguished so cannot be described so cannot exist in the minds of the people that cannot describe it.

     Interestingly, George Orwell, a prominent mid-twentieth century British writer, promoted popular knowledge of this cognitive-linguistic link in his novel 1984's language "Newspeak." The invented language showed how power can use language to deceive and manipulate people, leading to a society in which the population blindly obeys the government. Without the language to imagine ideas of rebellion, revolt, or resistance, the populace becomes unable to convey dissatisfaction with the distribution of power. By limiting language, Orwell's Big Brother government uses language as a mind-control tool to limit the will and imagination of the language's users. Though popular for its themes of corruption, distrust, and fear of large governments, Orwell's focus was to show how words shape people's sense of reality through the concealment of truths and manipulation of presentation to history.
     As the internet aids in the globalization of the economy and speeds the industrialization of billions of people, new words are being invented for technological innovations, techniques, and social interactions as humans have done for thousands of years. However, with the increased permeability of cultural perspectives, words are changing hands ever more rapidly. Though the mixed-slurred language blend of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner does not seem likely within the next few years, the rapid exchange is changing the way younger generations perceive the world. With the explosive development of the scientific system in the late nineteenth century, languages were cataloged, recorded, and fixed. With the established language code in place, science translated between English, French, and German cultures rapidly and led to the modern age. As science has slowed its progress, language has begun to evolve beyond the rigid confines of the nineteenth century.
     Language affects human perception of the world. If this assumption is true, language has the power to change the focus of humanity by altering the focus of science and repurposing the power of politics. With its ability to alter the reality of the user, language is the most powerful tool of humanity. Language is the magic of man.

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Agatha Tyche