If you could physically reshape the world — raising land from the sea, redirecting rivers, connecting oceans — would you? The answer for most people throughout much of human history would have been yes. Our ancestors’ ambition to change the world outpaced their technological capabilities, but only for so long.
Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Egypt in 1854 to realize a dream millennia in the making. By 1869, he had accomplished through human ingenuity what had nearly been a natural accident: connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal. Following this success, de Lesseps went to South America to lead a feat of engineering even more ambitious, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific through a canal in Panama, cutting the Americas in half. And though de Lesseps was unsuccessful in his time, the attempt set a model that inspired future engineers. The Panama Canal project was subsequently taken up and completed by the United States in 1914. Such undertakings of national advancement were celebrated without apology. God gave man wisdom and free will; it was expected that man would ambitiously use those capabilities to reshape the earth according to humanity’s own needs while using that same wisdom to prudently steward the natural world.
