Pangaea: Our World United
Elise Randles, Spring 2007
GIS I
Our sense of the Earth of it from our human a daily perspective where we can see no more than 13 miles on flat ground, we can not feel the earth swift turning, and only with patient observation can we perceive the tides movement. It is impossible to perceive the great movements of the earth, save when it jolts and shifts in sudden quakes. Yet from our human perspective other edges of the earth are a click or a phone call away, our judgment of distance is quantified in hours spent on airplanes, not in miles over mountains and oceans. New York is a concept, Tokyo, Paris are ideas in our minds, although we may not have even been there. In our minds Hong Kong, Moscow, Mexico City are Known to us, these places are familiar, assessable though movies, music, the internet. They are icons, hardly geographic places to our senses and associations. In thinking about our modern economically interconnected world, and the unification and homogony culturally, contrasted against the unparallel actuality of the shape of every wrinkle on a coast line, all the innumerable attributes of every inch of the earth, man made and natural, where these thought coincide with overwhelming awe at how finite and miniscule the human perspective is compared with earths great mass and age is a place called Pangaea.
In Geologic time compared with human the estimated 500 million years since our great land masses was united as the super continent called Pangaea, in human terms is as minuet as the life time of a zit. London is 500 million years away not 4 hours and poor fair with plastic forks. Comprehend the luggage you carry on your flight, made in Indonesia purchased just minutes from your house, Indonesia that small crumbled sliver of Pangaea. All the other pieces that make up you attire, your car, the gas that goes in it, the airport, your meal, the physical element of your every day, from what piece of Pangaea did they come from?
The idea behind this map of Pangaea was a inspired gleeful discussion with artist Jackie Holstrom who resides in Portland Oregon,. Jackie posed Pangaea as a grand absurd Icon for our world culturally. We were both compelled by this idea. Pangaea the impossible, it seemed like the name for utopia that must exist internationally in the minds off all free thinkers. Pangaea: free from all governments, free from all social and geo-political boundaries. Oh, how South America snuggles with Africa, and Antarctica sleeps at their feet keeping them warm, Pangaea, where our world is peacefully united. Pangaea is John and Yoko, Pangaea is Texas, Pangaea is world peace, Pangaea embraces all, unifies all, Pangaea the impossible... Yet it exists.
Pangaea, like Paris, London and is in all of our minds, there has yet to be a major motion picture to bring it to the forefront of universal consciousness, but it is there, it will have flag, postcard will be sold to send to the folks back home, and the commute from Machias Maine to coast of Morocco is only ten miles...and 500 million years distance away.
Click here to download a PDF version of the map that allows zooming and clickable layers.
