Nestled under Ibiza's Old Town is Puig Des Molins, a Phoenician necropolis which dates back to approximately 600BC and is considered one of the largest and best-preserved necropolis along in the West. Necropolises, ancient burial sites research suggests, were made significant in the ancient West by the early influence of the Egyptians. With their substantial consideration for life beyond the life lived on earth within our fallible corporeality, the construction of bespoke places of rest or residence for the dead became a burial practice adopted by many western civilisations through history. Based on the research available to us, we can learn waves of colonisers made use of Ibiza's Puig Des Molins, from the early Phoenician explorers to the rogue Carthaginians, colonisers from Africa and of course, the Romans. The word Necropolis, partly deriving from the Ancient Greek 'nekros', roughly translates to 'City of the Dead' and it was customary for colonial settlements to build these burial sites in close proximity to where their populace lived, loved, fought and traded, so the dead could essentially continue as a parallel manifestation right alongside the living. As an illustration of this necro-domesticity the Phoenician necropolis in Ibiza is centrally situated underneath Ibiza's Old Town, or Ibiza City.

Due to these numerous civilisations making use of the Mediterranean's prosperous climate and trade routes, the island of Ibiza has held a significant role in the migration, trade and battles that have taken across these epochs, right along the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Sea from the ports of ancient Syria and Lebanon — supposedly the founding lands of the Phoenicians, but also of great trading importance to Mesopotamian Empires — through greek controlled land and waters, right down to the Phoenician trading centre of Tangier and beyond. Our most recent migratory epochs have demarcated Europe from the Middle East (with significant Western influence driving the middle East's cultural fragmentation and homogeneity of language and cultures), and Africa. If we're not belligerently head-in the-sand-ignorant about the realities, histories and evolution of the human condition, then we're informed enough to understand, trade, migration and the movement of, wealth, resources, languages and ideas, forms the makeup of our globe and continues to do so. From this point of historical comprehension, maybe it is interesting to consider the roles life, death and even the afterlife play in this narrative of migration, evolving borders and ideologies. The story of the body itself.

It is a fairly well-known point of mirth that immediately underneath the countless revelling bodies in the countless parties, clubs and hedonistic abandon of contemporary Ibiza lies this largest and best-preserved necropolis which has housed three to four thousand or so tombs with expensively adorned bodily remains. Many of these tombs have been found accompanied by carefully curated objects and personal belongings laid out alongside the dead, that were considered potentially useful in the afterlife of the well-to-do nobles buried there. A variety of amulets from various sources, tools, ceramics, coins and weapons were found, we suppose, the necessary belongings for an esteemed noble to hit the ground running with the same quality of life in the next world.

Many previous civilisations have regarded the afterlife as important as this one, so it is interesting to think about the continuation of societal and economic hierarchies beyond the land of the living and beyond the epochs of the past and maybe on to those of today and then tomorrow. The tombs of Puig des Molins were the reserve of wealthy Phoenician nobles, and let us be honest, one requires a certain standard of living to be able to afford to party on the wildly expensive hedonistic carousel that exists on the island just above ground.

Economic migration seems to manifest itself in tiers, led by (for better or worse) small clusters with the economic might and influence laying out high-level geopolitical strategy that shifts the plates of the earth and moves wealth and resources as well as redraws the lines of borders and control and us the beholden consumers. Lower tiers are subjected to the forces of the waves and tremors, like gravitational forces on the earth and they must respond accordingly. The slaves of nobles buried in Phoenician and then Carthaginian tombs were buried alongside their masters, we could imagine done so just in case servitude were a possibility in the afterlife.

A few days before writing this, another report of a 'migrant' shipwreck on the Mediterranean temporarily fills our timelines. 150 individual lives found themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving sea. Many of them survived, but only to be reabsorbed into the murky body-processing systems and sometimes enslavement of Libyan authorities (if one can declare them systems at all within such Western-triggered lawlessness). Many others on board perished and images of the recovered bodies being processed for burial were haunting in their starkness.

Black plastic bags lined the Libyan beaches, scattered along the coastline line like our plastic waste that is vomited up by an unsettled sea onto the beach. Devoid of ceremony, belongings or reverence, the bodies were lying in wait to be anonymously deposited into holes in the ground. A distinct illustration, if any, of today's societal inequalities through life and on into death.

An official declaration by the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) on their definition of what a migrant actually is, states the following:

"A 'migrant' is fundamentally different from a refugee. Refugees are forced to flee to save their lives or preserve their freedom, but 'migrant' describes any person who moves, usually across an international border, to join family members already abroad, to search for a livelihood, to escape a natural disaster, or for a range of other purposes. However, refugees and migrants often employ the same routes, modes of transport, and networks. Movements of both refugees and migrants are commonly referred to as 'mixed movements'. It is important to distinguish the different categories of person in mixed migratory movements, and apply the appropriate framework of rights, responsibilities and protection."

Though we're in the age of anthropological categorisation, it is still difficult to determine the difference between 'migrant' and 'refugee' that the UNCHR is attempting to layout in this statement, either as a historical or contemporary definition. The undiscovered bodies that perished in the sea are immediately consigned to history and become just another layer of human sediment on the large all welcoming necropolis of the Mediterranean seabed, home to countless shipwrecks, belongings, acts of vengeance, victories, failures and the incomplete dreams of innumerable aspirational travellers and traders. Whilst along the same Mediterranean waters, not such a distance away, other tremors can be felt and heard. There's the suggestion that large scale ceremonies with 'rhythmic dancing' were a feature of ancient Carthaginian religious ceremonies and additionally, we can craft interesting parallels to the suggestion that slaves of ancient Phoenicians accompanied their masters to the afterlife, in our world of increasing extremes, geopolitical complexity and the consequent modern slavery, now part of our current capitalist epoch. Ceremony and rituals of ancient times are echoed in the rhythmic thudding of dancing feet, the popping of champagne corks, on beaches commodified down to an individual grain of sand, and the pleasant melodic explorations over thudding bass tracks can be heard from afar, as the nobles of today revel in the pleasures offered by the machinations, production and human harvest from the economic extremes of this dynamic 'late-stage capitalism'.

Unlike the nobles of yesteryear travelling in opulence and style on to the afterlife, the migrants of today flee their homes with minimal possessions to take on to a new life. They travel light, often even without family members, on the journey to new lands and dreams of improved economic conditions, and the abstracted dream of the potential absence of visible war and violence, improved human rights or even climate. Abstract rather, as our geopolitical infrastructure is more dense and complex than ever before, with a tremor beginning in one government/corporate boardroom on one side of the planet, to be felt on the socio-political Richter Scale on another. Our ongoing international warfare is now obfuscated and largely invisible to the common eye, as too much is still reliant on global trade, so bombing one's immediate neighbours would come at considerable cost.

Poetic irony is par for the course in this era of late capitalism, as also this summer right across the water from the catastrophic Libyan shipwreck, a Google 'summer camp' on climate change is being held for the super-wealthy, who arrive in typical opulence in a variety of luxury travel including a number of private jets and superyachts. Italy's new significantly right positioned interior minister, Matthew Salvini, put a block on migrant ships docking at Italian ports, a contentious decision, but beyond the practicalities, regarded by some as a statement against the slow-motion inertia often experienced in a multinational organisation like the EU. With this annual summer camp shrouded in secrecy, One can cynically imagine the nobles of today essentially plotting their escape to an anthropocentric afterlife, as it has been deduced we're now too late to save the earth as a habitat that can still accommodate human life. The irony of Google holding the climate summit can be extended to considering how their much of their business model is predicated on harvesting every tiny aspect of the human experience for the profit, whilst also connecting us in unprecedented ways. Though it is possible to argue that alongside a number of other global techs-conglomerations we needn't name, they're enacting a new neo-colonialism. Maybe something altruistic will come from this accrued mass of information about the human race and will be used for the benefit of the earth we inhabit, or maybe not.

As many profit from our manufactured division and despair, it is clear disaster capitalism does not just refer to nihilistic exploitation of the environment, but rather also an exploitation of the human spirit that supersedes labour.

We're firmly positioned within a new epoch of migration, with traditional routes down and across the Mediterranean Sea again playing a key role. Unknown bodies traversing unknowable waters, to new shores in search of more fruitful lands, but it is tempting to let the mind wander to a speculative future for Europe, The Mediterranean and the general recalibration of the earth through this and coming eras of migration and climate change. An ancient country was set aflame in revolt a few years ago, and bodies fled mostly out through the lands of Europe. A mediatised separation between us and the realities of the afterlife of this beautifully historic country, Syria, that has a lineage richer than the recorded history of western civilisations, then brings shock to the white faces of Europe, as though the events they were following in realtime through the flatness of digital screens, were just narrative entertainment akin to a Netflix series in which Kingdoms of faraway lands joust for ultimate position, by migrating through each other's lands and employing humanity's instinctive barbarism to assert crucial tribalistic dominance for their own survival.

Within these speculative imaginings, a two-tiered world drifts further into its extremes of inequality and division as the borderless monied class(es) clamp down on economic and natural resources, further staking their claims, before the value of money itself dissipates. The wealthy separate themselves off into a bunkered underworld, surrounding themselves with the accrued wares of this world as they scurry off to possible afterlives beyond the earth's irreparably toxic atmosphere.

Wealth and privilege will be defined as who is most able to avoid the sun. Within this context maybe it is then easier to understand the strategy behind these orchestrated xenophobic practices. Racism and xenophobia have always been employed for economic purposes. The enslavement of bodies to be used as labour, or sold as products to accelerate the economic might of a select few is an ancient practice within itself. Visit a resort in Dubai and look into the eyes of the Sudanese man pouring your champagne, or watch a video running on a loop of a Bangladeshi man falling from the side of a partially constructed stadium in Qatar for the World Cup, to be held in two years time. His contract immediately annulled, maybe his family back home goes untold, he disappears without a trace. The general populace is increasingly pitted against itself, the oppositional outrage existing mostly within the techno-sphere (before it dribbles out malevolently into the physical world), creating fervent engagement, which further lines the pockets of those with the means now to determine how a finite future on this planet will be navigated. Migratory epochs from the earth itself are possibly not so far away as the drive to preserve a particular idea of humanity (namely white humanity) is stronger than the desire to preserve the habitat that birthed and nurtured humanity itself. There is likely already a tacit understanding that it is actually too late to save the earth.

The north side of the island of Ibiza is well known as a haven for yogic spirituality. Like the rituals of the ancient worlds worshipping on these exact same lands, young and old alike come together to find a route through the body that can take one closer to symbiosis with the life force of the planet, and like many movements through many civilisations, it is a movement of selective reasoning. Like the nobles preparing for their own migration to the afterlife, this reach for wellness and a new spirituality prioritises the self, even if the original teachings do not, and as we attempt to tune into the earth's frequencies with an 'ohm', or two-step dance with abandon in a chemically accentuated trance, beneath us and in close proximity within the same waters, other bodies dream and reach for the same things we have, which we realistically only have because they do not have. We cannot talk about migration or climate catastrophe without talking about capitalism and what can be seen as one of the defining legacies of global capitalism, is its silent killings and silent burials of less fortunate bodies and its silent killing of an exasperated earth that, maybe unwittingly, gave birth to its own horror.