Seat of Our Pants

The word ‘culture’ derives from cultivating, as in cultivating the earth: the act of bringing food out of the soil through hard work. With time, the word came to mean more than that – it came to represent the very qualities that set us apart as a species.

The link between agriculture and culture is pretty obvious here in Bagan. Among the cultural relics, the direct descendants of the people who built the temples are still toiling with the earth, cultivating peanuts, corn, sour plums and tobacco. Even though Kublai Khan sacked the place 800 years ago, they’re still here, and they’re not going anywhere. Bagan is a link between what civilization once emerged from, and what it is today. That’s pretty cool in my books.

So take that, Kublai.

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