BIG READ: The divisions in the wake of the Wallace Line
The divide has greater significance than a conventional understanding of the evolution of life
We sailed slowly across the Makassar Strait from the east coast of Borneo towards the island of Sulawesi. Our destination, the city of Makassar, was still below the horizon in the distance somewhere. It was an uneventful passage, until someone mentioned that we had crossed the Wallace Line. I looked down at the deck, imagining the hull of our vessel, the ocean beneath it, the ocean floor and the imaginary line that runs across the bed of the Java Sea past Borneo, north into the Celebes Sea, passing the Philippines on the west, and south between the Indonesian Islands of Bali and Lombok, then into the Indian Ocean.
I looked up at the sky and smiled. It was like that moment when I stood on the equator, south of the Ecuadoran city of Quito, or the time I skated on a frozen pond near Tromso in the Arctic Circle. These are perfect moments that remind us of our place in the universe, how fortunate we are and yet how insignificant we are on our pale blue dot in the ever-expanding un...
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