Answer:
Ecumene is a term used by geographers to mean inhabited land. It generally refers to land where people have made their permanent home, and to all work areas that are considered occupied and used for agricultural or any other economic purpose.
Explanation:
The ecumene (US) or oecumene (UK; Greek: οἰκουμένη, oikouménē, lit. "inhabited") was an ancient Greek term for the known, the inhabited, or the habitable world. Under the Roman Empire, it came to refer to civilization as well as the secular and religious imperial administration. In present usage, it is most often used in the context of "ecumenical" and describes the Christian Church as a unified whole, or the unified modern world civilization. It is also used in cartography to describe a type of world map (mappa mundi) used in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Relative dating is used to determine a fossils approximate age by comparing it to similar rocks and fossils of known ages. Absolute dating is used to determine a precise age of a fossil by using radiometric dating to measure the decay of isotopes, either within the fossil or more often the rocks associated with it.
Maybe when Christopher Herbert described the borders of New Hampshire as "an idea", he meant that people think of it that way since it serves as a 'gate' to the immigrants, mostly illegal, to create a new life, an ideally successful life beyond the border.