Long before the first army marched, each map had already been redrawn by smaller quarrels.
In Europe, Spain and Portugal shook hands and became Iberia; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania swore a pact as the Baltics; and Norway, restless and hungry, fell upon Sweden in the night, bent it to its will, and raised one banner over both — Scandinavia.
In Africa, the desert cousins Mali and Mauritania roamed as one; Morocco swallowed the Western Sahara; the Horn — Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia — bound their fates on the Red Sea; and along the great river, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique flowed together as the Zambezi.
In South America, the map came through almost untouched — Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile still held the Andes each under its own name, and Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay eyed one another warily across the Plate. Only the northern shore was redrawn: Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana stood watch as one, the three Guianas beneath a single banner.
And so, when the great war finally came, it was fought not by nations but by these blocs — each coloured territory a marriage, a conquest, or a nation that stayed stubbornly itself.
Atlas — from ancient Greek Ἄτλας (Átlas), the Titan condemned to be "The Bearer (of the Heavens)" after his failed attempt at taking on the Olympian gods for control of the universe. The word became associated with maps in the 16th century, when Gerardus Mercator published his world atlas, the Atlas of Mercator.
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