you learn the iterations of the myth.
You learn the next level of knowledge.
And finally, all over Africa, you see this board game.
It's called Owari in Ghana, where I studied it;
it's called Mancala here on the East Coast, Bao in Kenya, Sogo elsewhere.
Well, you see self-organizing patterns that spontaneously occur in this board game.
And the folks in Ghana knew about these self-organizing patterns
and would use them strategically.
So this is very conscious knowledge.
Here's a wonderful fractal.
Anywhere you go in the Sahel, you'll see this windscreen.
And of course fences around the world are all Cartesian, all strictly linear.
But here in Africa, you've got these nonlinear scaling fences.
So I tracked down one of the folks who makes these things,
this guy in Mali just outside of Bamako, and I asked him,
"How come you're making fractal fences? Because nobody else is."
And his answer was very interesting.
He said, "Well, if I lived in the jungle, I would only use the long rows of straw
because they're very quick and they're very cheap.
It doesn't take much time, doesn't take much straw."
He said, "but wind and dust goes through pretty easily.