Land

In one of his talking blues, Woody Guthrie comments that "everybody's looking for some kind of a little place."

ANCHORAGE — A town in Alaska's interior that offered free land to anyone willing to put down roots had it all spoken for within hours Monday.

People dropped everything to fly or drive north, camping out in weather as cold as 25 below and dreaming of homes they would build amid the spruce and cottonwoods of the town of Anderson, population 300.


Read the story.

They offered over two dozen large lots for a $500 deposit. One had to build a house of at least 1000 sq ft within two years. Not a bad deal -- if you like winter.

In The Lessons of History, the Durants conclude from a lifelong study of world history that most wars are fought over land at root -- and those things attached to land (water, oil). In the 1960s Robert Ardrey explored this thesis in
The Territorial Imperative and other works, creating something of a controversy in anthropological circles. I'm not sure how the debate is weighed today.