He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over

It was not one continuous hike. He takes frequent breaks. But travels back to where he last stopped and continues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Bushby

Still very impressive, but a little less impressive than I first thought.

It would be impossible to do without taking breaks, as explained in the article:

> Due to visa limits, Bushby has had to break up his walk. In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days before leaving for 90, so he flies to Mexico to rest and then returns to resume the route.

Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order to avoid Russia and Iran because of legal issues, nevermind bring imprisoned in Russia due to what sounded like bureaucratic BS, it's more impressive than I first thought.

From Wiki:

> They were detained by Russian border troop officers while they were crossing the Russian border near the Chukotkan village of Uelen, for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry.

Illegal border crossing is absolutely not bureaucratic BS in any country.

This might be a little broad for most, but I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired. Who cares? We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

I'm saying this as someone who enlisted in the defense of said nations once. Most of the structures that make up a country these days are for the birds - let a guy hike for chrissake. I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense. We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Plenty of people care, for all sorts of reasons, many of which I would say, are good!

What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers?

Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example.

Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking.

I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.

If you're talking about "the freedom to escape one's surroundings and move away", the book has been widely criticized for that assertion, as Graeber is extremely ideologically motivated.

If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all.

Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today.

There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...

Been awhile since I've listened to the book (all cards on the table), so I can't be specific. Nor am I an expert in anyway. My takeaway is that the pre-historical Americas had many diverse ways of organizing people that doesn't quite match up to the implied-risk-game of territory that I was responding too.

In starting to read through some of the criticism's of the book just now, I was reminded of the seasonal hunting parties where many smaller groups would band together for better kills. That's what I mean with "tribal fluidity".

And by freedom of movement, the impression that I had coming away from the listen was that there were many ways in which someone could find themselves in a role where the could migrate through several communities and still live. looking at things again presently, I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_tradition, which I think illustrates what I was trying to convey. "Border sovereignty" doesn't make much sense to me as a concept in that world... i think things were much more fluid. There weren't border checkpoints throughout prehistory.