The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (CBC Massey Lecture)

by Wade Davis

Wealth was not defined as ownership, but by the prestige and status that came to one who gave well and thus secured a social network, a sort of human capital of culture, a treasury of ritual debts and obligations that would yield interest to one’s clan and family forever.

Cortés sent his cousin Francisco north along the coast of Mexico to investigate reports of a land of women ruled by a mythical black Queen Califia — hence the name California. Indeed,