Let's color the map of the 48 states with four colors. Note that California has only three neighbors, and therefore no matter how we color the rest of the map California is colorable, so we postpone California and get a reduced map with the rest of the states. In the reduced map Arizona has only three neighbors and can be postponed as part of coloring the reduced map. We can continue the process of postponement until we get a completely reduced map in which each state has four or more neighbors. In the case of the US, the completely reduced map is empty. This is also true for the maps of Europe and Asia, Africa, South America, and the departments of France. It is easy to construct a map in which every country has four or more neighbors. Indeed, as Kempe proved, there are maps in which every country has five or more neighbors. However, I haven't been able to find a map on the face of the earth in which every country has four or more neighbors. Can anyone find one? I'd be disappointed if the result was achieved with the aid of a disconnected country. The phenomenon can be generalized to the notion of a postponable variable in a constraint satisfaction problem. I discuss postponing countries with four or fewer neighbors in a 1982 paper entitle "Map coloring and the Kowalski doctrine". It's in my 1990 book "Formalizing common sense" and on my web site as http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/coloring.html. I see no reason why our ancestors should have arranged their countries, states, provinces, and counties in such an easy to color way.