Since ancient times, learning environment and increasing the living space, people thought about how the world works, where he lives.Trying to explain the arrangement of the Earth and the universe, he used his close and understandable categories, above all, drawing parallels with the familiar nature and the countryside in which he lived.As people used to represent Earth?What they thought of her form and place in the universe?How changed over time their performance?All this allows to know the historical sources that have survived to the present day.
how ancient people imagined the Earth
first prototype maps are known to us in the form of images, left by our ancestors on the walls of caves, incisions on the stones and bones of animals.The researchers found these sketches in different parts of the world.These drawings depict a hunting ground, the place where the miners game to set traps, as well as roads.
schematically depicted rivers, caves, mountains, forests on the materials at hand, man has sought to convey information about them to future generations.To distinguish them familiar objects from the new location just opened, people gave them names.Thus, humanity is gradually accumulating geographic experience.And even then, our ancestors began to wonder about what the Earth.
How ancient people imagined the Earth, is largely dependent on the nature of the relief and climate of the places where they lived.Because the peoples all over the world in their own way have seen the world, and the views vary significantly.
Babylon
valuable historical information about how ancient people imagined the Earth left us civilization, lived on the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, inhabited the Nile Delta and the Mediterranean coast (modern territory of Asia Minor and southern Europe).This information is more than six thousand years.
The ancient Babylonians believed the Earth "world mountain", on the western slope which was Babylon - their country.Such a proposal promoted by the fact that the eastern part of the friends of the lands rested against the high mountains, which no one dared to go.
south of Babylonia was the sea.It allowed people to assume that the "world mountain" is actually round and washed by the sea on all sides.On the sea, like the inverted bowl rests hard heavenly world, which is much like Earth.Here, too, he had his own "land", "air" and "water".The role played belt sushi zodiacal constellations, celestial blocked the "sea" like a dam.It was believed that this poised moon, sun and several planets.Sky Babylonians imagined the residence of the gods.
souls of dead people, by contrast, lived in the underground, "the abyss."At night, the Sun, plunging into the sea, had to pass through this cave on the western edge of the earth to the east, and in the morning, going from the sea to the firmament, to begin again on her way to your day.
based on how the people of Earth were in Babylon were put observation of natural phenomena.However, to interpret the Babylonians they could not.
Palestine
As for the inhabitants of this country, on this land dominated by other views that are different from the Babylonian.Ancient Jews living in the plains.Therefore, the Earth in their vision also looked plain, which sometimes cross the mountains.
winds, bringing with them the drought, the rain, in the occupied Palestinian beliefs special place.Living in "lower tier" of the sky, they are separated by "heavenly water" from the Earth's surface.Water, moreover, was, and under the earth, feeding out the seas and rivers on its surface.
India, Japan, China
Probably the most famous today a legend tells of how the ancient people imagined the Earth was composed of ancient Indians.These people believed that the earth actually has the shape of a hemisphere that rests on the backs of four elephants.These elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle floating in the endless sea of milk.All these creatures twine multiple rings black cobra Sesa, which had several thousand.These heads, according to the beliefs of Indians, propped up the universe.
Earth in the ancient Japanese submission was limited to the territory of the islands known to them.She attributed cubic form, and frequent earthquakes occurring in their homeland, were due to the exuberance of fire-breathing dragon, who lives deep in its interior.
Residents of Ancient China Rest assured that the earth - is a flat rectangle, the corners of which are placed four columns holding up the convex dome of the heavens.Once one of the columns was bent furious dragon, and since then the Earth lurches to the east, and the sky - to the west.So the Chinese have explained why all the heavenly bodies are moved from east to west, and all the rivers flow in their country to the east.
Aztec and Mayan
interesting to know how the Earth was represented by ancient people who inhabited the American continent.So, Maya peoples rest assured that the Earth is actually a square.From its center grows Initial Tree.In the corners, in strict accordance with a certain aspect of light grew four more like Tree - World.Eastern Tree was red, the color of the dawn, the north - the white, western - black as night, and the south - yellow like the sun.
carefully watching the movements of the heavenly bodies, the Maya astronomers noticed that each of them is characteristic of the way.From this it followed the conclusion that each star moves in its "layer" of the sky.All in all, "heaven" in the beliefs of the Maya was thirteen.
yet another ancient people of America, the Aztecs, the Earth was seen by five squares arranged in a checkerboard pattern.In the center was a terra firma with the gods, she was surrounded by water.The remaining four sectors that make up the world, have their own characteristic features, colors, were inhabited by special plants and animals.
Greeks
In the most ancient representations of the Greek population of the Earth, it is referred to as a bulging disc, similar to the shield of a warrior.Above it, the sky is made of copper, in which the sun moves.It was believed that the land is surrounded on all sides by the river - ocean.
Over time, the vision of the Greeks of the Earth is undergoing changes.The scientist Anaximander, who lived in the fourth century BC, considered her "center of the universe" and concluded that the constellations in the sky move around.
famous Pythagoras first expressed the idea that the Earth is a sphere.But Aristarchus of Samos, who lived in Greece more than 2,300 years ago, came to the conclusion that it is our planet revolves around the sun and not vice versa.However, his contemporaries did not believe him, and after the death of his discovery of Aristarchus quickly forgotten.
as representing the people of Earth in the Middle Ages
With the development of technology and ship business people began to make more and more distant travel, expanding the geographical knowledge, making more and more detailed maps.Gradually they began to gather evidence to draw a conclusion about the spherical shape of the Earth.Europeans are particularly successful in this in the Age of Discovery.
About five hundred years ago, the Polish scientist astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, watching the stars, found that the center of the universe is precisely the sun, not the Earth.Almost 40 years after the death of his Copernican ideas were developed by Italian Galileo Galilei.This scientist was able to prove that all the planets of the solar system, including Earth, in fact, revolve around the sun.Galileo was accused of heresy and forced to recant his teachings.
However, the Englishman Isaac Newton, born a year after the death of Galileo, eventually managed to discover the law of universal gravitation.On this basis, he explained why the moon revolves around the Earth, and the planet with satellites and numerous celestial bodies revolves around the sun.
