STOLEN LANDS AND FENCES _________________________ Because of the nature of the environment when Man first came from the trees, or wherever, he was a nomadic creature. He, with his (probable) group, needed to wander to find suitable shelter and food. As food was more often than not on the move, he needed to move with it. If  he settled in one place because that place provided his needs (at least for a while), he needed to construct a device to contain his group and keep out those elements that were a danger to him, after all, he was prey as well. So he built fences. Fences are strange things. They can be made of anything handy to KEEPS THINGS OUT. As physical structures, they do that, even today (mostly). When societies grew, the fenced domains remained (unless the inhabitants had moved) but the borders of the encampments grew. However, unlike physical fences, borders are not really physical, except perhaps for mountains and such-like. A fence is anything you can't easily climb over. Encampments expanded and became territories, bounded by most often by no physical means. Thus disputes would result in some form of fighting to gain more territory depending on the skills of the invaders. This was because fence-building would have become more difficult in the long run (pun intended). All animals react in the same way, even now, of course. If there is no threat, then the territory can expand. Thus invasions began along borders of territories (where possible) with the weapons of warfare on the basis of  'I'm bigger and better equipped than you', syndrome. However, the 'fence' mentality still prevailed in many people's minds and still does today, especially in people who want to retain their own fences (for seclusion as well as defence) and/but have no wish to invade others'. The unfortunate thing about today (and many years ago especially with exploration of the planet) is that there are a great number of people who are/were still nomadic in the original sense as described above. Examples are the natives of Africa, the Red Indians and the Australian aborigines. These peoples were still nomadic and in truth, remain so (they have just been contained on some sort of reservation). So, being nomadic, they did not have fences and still do not;  they did not need them because they were and are of no use to them; there is no concept of them at all. Then came the 'Fence People' from Europe (for example). They know that fences are meant to KEEP THINGS OUT, so that they less often invade them. However, the mentality is that if there are no fences, the land is open game for settlement. Hence the stealing of land. If it is fenced it is less likely that it will be invaded because it belongs to someone and it would be stealing. If it is not fenced, then it doesn't belong to anybody, so it is not stealing. But it is, of course stealing and, apparently, that matters not a jot to these people. So Europeans stole 'Africa', the 'Americas', 'Australia' and many, many other indigenous peoples' lands because there were no fences. quod erat demonstrandum

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