Since at least 1494, men have been drawing political boundaries that are at odds with the natural topography of the areas they are mapping and that are later made sillier still by economic development.
In that year, Spanish and Portuguese representatives met in the town of Tordesillas in north-western Spain, where they agreed to draw a line in the Atlantic Ocean about 1,800 kilometres west of the Cape Verde Islands.
According to the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal was entitled to all New World lands discovered east of the line, and Spain to all lands west. As a result, Portugal ended up with Brazil and Spain with the rest, including all the valuable bits like gold- and silver-rich Mexico and Peru.
Unfortunately, 500 years or so later the spirit of Tordesillas is alive and well in Hong Kong's own backyard, where established administrative boundaries in the Pearl River Delta could not be worse suited to environmental and economic realities.
Consider first the delta's natural environment, as highlighted last week in a study, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta: Expanding Horizons, released by Project 2022.
The project was established by some of Hong Kong's leading businessmen 'to help frame and focus the debate on the future development of the Pearl River Delta Region'. The project takes its name from the year, 2022, in which Hong Kong will celebrate its 25th anniversary as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China.