Borders don't really exist until we call them into the world. Then signs and pillars and fences go up, landscapes change, and people are drawn in for commerce, or for adventure, or out of desperation.

Welcome to Border/Lands, Atlas Obscura’s in-depth exploration of how we make borders and how borders make us. In West Africa, we investigate how a border comes to be in the 21st century. Off the coast of Maine, we follow how personal a border dispute can be. In the desert of northern Colombia, we track the rise and fall of a neighboring nation through an ethnic community that once thrived on cross-border commerce. In Germany, we see how borders, even once they’re gone, can have a lasting impact. And in Lebanon, we juxtapose the statelessness of an ancient order with a modern refugee crisis. In all of these cases, national sovereignty, personal identity, and sense of community manifest on and around the imaginary lines that gird our world.