ABSTRACT
If there is a mythical document par excellence, it must be the passport. The proverbial Martian who does not know what things on Earth are, let alone what they mean, would see little more than a bundle of different sorts of paper—plastic, textilish, card stock, smooth, rough—with letters, a picture, and possibly some elaborate icons. A smart and sensitive Martian would notice that an earthling who looked like the image in the bundle guarded it carefully, and the Martian would therefore conclude that the bundle was important. Further investigation would reveal that the bundle allows the earthling to travel between ‘countries’, and that it also serves as proof of the earthling’s identity.
