alt Hacker NewsAt some point, all land has been taken either by direct force, or by the threat of force.
All land, everywhere. It is NOT a natural right that anyone owns any land, nor that any countries exist. That is something everyone's ancestors fought each other for and created as a system of human society.
Of course that's written in the past tense. Facing reality rather than the fantasy presented in history books and documentaries; not only did our ancestors do that, it hasn't stopped. The bloodshed still happens today in so many places. Those we might hear about in the news, and others forgotten even in the news because it is considered normal and thus ignored.
We are not yet a species of plenty. Scarcity still exists, at the very least in the real form of land where people want to be.
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> At some point, all land has been taken either by direct force, or by the threat of force
You're broadly correct. But there is land that was settled within the historical record.
The Levant, obviously, is not that. It was settled prior to the historical record. It is the coast closest to our cradle of civilisation. Every human with ancestry outside Africa has some sort of claim to lineage to that land.
Seems overstated and contrived to use 'all land'.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntarcticaThere was no one to "take it from" and when it was divided up by "Great powers" that was more by competition (race to open routes) and some notion of good sport:
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_AntarcticaThen there are the more remote parts of Australia, nominally "taken" by the English (despite not being reached for some time) and later returned (post Mabo) to the descendants of what seems likely to be first settlers some tens of thousands of years past (the multiple waves of settlement arguments and other aspects of the History Wars in the Black Armband / Quadrant circles are looking thin in these days of genetic markers).
But that one's a complex can of worms that takes some time to unpack.