Sublime

This was a sophisticated mercantile economy in which paper money was supplied by private enterprise and credit was based on the sale of contracts for the future supply of salt to the government – a commodity for which demand was exceptionally stable.

Any user of a map or model must realize that we do not understand a model, map, or reduction unless we understand and respect its limitations. If we don’t understand what the map does and doesn’t tell us, it can be useless or even dangerous.

Apart from a very limited amount of state sponsorship, it was usually the prospect of commercial gain or of new lands for settlement which funded exploration – a misleading term, which usually signified the ‘mapping’ of existing trade paths through local informants. But the propulsion of economic or demographic need was spasmodic at best.

cracks, by which we navigate