What lies to the east is obvious: Bustling streets lined with shops; vendors who crowd against a human sea in the heat of the day. There is a subtle stench that fills the air, but no one seems to notice or even care. To those who dwell near the medieval port, such inconvenience is taken in stride. More devious is that which is unknown: The viral life too small to be seen by the naked eye that draws its life from the human blood of its hosts and will, in short order, leave its mark with a plague of death.

What lies to the west is less obvious and more dangerous than the plague — at least in the human mind. The ocean stretches as far as the human eye can see. And what exists beyond the horizon, though unseen, is commonly known among all. There are creatures of the sea, monsters of the deep, whose powerful fins and flailing tails can cause a ship to break asunder and its crews forever lost to a briny grave. If one were to sail far enough to the west, he would reach the end of the earth, its existence known by the myriad of vessels that never returned to port; lost into an eternity of nothingness, an unfit end to those who sail too close to the edge.

And so it was, until someone actually sailed to the horizon and beyond. 300 leagues, one ship was said to venture. It returned to port with news of nothing more than the ordinary. And so the creatures of the sea moved in the human mind just beyond observation; just beyond 300 leagues.

It wasn’t until the globe was circumvented that tales of ships sailing over the earth’s flat¹ edge fully disappeared from human lore. But stories still persisted. There was the fountain of youth to be found in Florida and cities of pure gold unseen by none but the natives who lived in South America. Discovery, once again, came up empty handed. There is neither fountain of youth nor cities of gold. Observation dispelled human imagination. What we saw contradicted what we believed, and so our beliefs surrendered to the simplicity of reality.

Enter sonar technology, satellite imaging and G.P.S. and the myths of monsters and other exotic stories are finally dispelled. Or are they?

Still living somewhere beyond the reach of human observation is a creature called Big Foot. There are also UFOs replete with grand conspiracies of aliens being dissected by secret government agencies. And there is God. It all exists just beyond the horizon and firmly embedded in the human mind.

© Copyright 2008 - all rights reserved

— KG

Thanks to Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828, we incorrectly presume pre-Columbian academics generally held to a flat-earth perspective. In reality the age of discovery confirmed what educated and informed Europeans already knew to be true: The earth was an orb.

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2008