Pakistan, Jan. 24 -- USA's President Donald Trump's talk of "taking" Greenland has dragged an ancient instinct into a world that claims it has outgrown it: the idea that territory can be owned, traded, or seized like a strategic asset. He has doubled down publicly, saying there is "no going back" on the objective of acquiring Greenland and even floating coercive options, while Denmark and EU leaders have treated the rhetoric as an attack on sovereignty. The immediate drama is transatlantic. The deeper issue is historical: how humanity moved from "possession by force" to "sovereignty by consent," and why that shift is now being stress-tested.

A peek into prehistoric and early human societies reveals that "ownership" of land was not a docu...