How did the ancient people imagine the Earth and what has changed since then?

Since ancient times, knowing the environment and expanding the living space, people thought about how the world works, where he lives. Trying to explain the structure of the Earth and the Universe, he used close and understandable categories, first of all, drawing parallels with the familiar nature and the locality in which he lived. How did people represent the Earth before? What did they think about its shape and place in the universe? How did their ideas change over time? All this allows us to learn the historical sources that have survived to this day.

How ancient people imagined the Earth

The first prototypes of geographical maps are known to us in the form of images left by our ancestors on the walls of caves, notches on stones and animal bones. Researchers find such sketches in different parts of the world. Similar drawings depict hunting grounds, places where game miners placed traps, as well as roads.

Schematically depicting rivers, caves, mountains, forests on the improvised material, the person sought to convey information about them to subsequent generations. To distinguish the familiar objects of the terrain from the new, just opened, people gave them names. So, gradually humanity accumulated geographic experience. And already then our ancestors began to wonder about what the Earth is.

The way ancient people imagined the Earth depended largely on the nature, terrain and climate of the places where they lived. Therefore, the peoples of different parts of the world saw the world around them in their own way, and these views differed significantly.

Babylon

Valuable historical information about how the ancient people imagined the Earth was left to us by civilizations living on the lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers , inhabiting the delta of the Nile and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea (modern territories of Asia Minor and southern Europe). This information is more than six thousand years old.

Thus, the ancient Babylonians considered the Earth a "world mountain", on the western slope of which was Babylonia - their country. This idea was promoted by the fact that the eastern part of the lands familiar to them rested on high mountains, which no one dared to cross.

To the south of Babylonia was the sea. This allowed people to believe that the "world mountain" is actually round, and is washed by the sea from all sides. On the sea, like an inverted cup, a solid heavenly world rests, which in many respects is similar to the earthly. Here, too, had its own "land", "air" and "water". The role of the sushi was performed by the belt of the zodiacal constellations, which blocked the heavenly "sea" like a dam. It was believed that the moon, the sun and several planets move along this firmament. The sky of the Babylonians seemed to be the residence of the gods.

Souls of deceased people, on the contrary, lived in the underground "abyss". At night, the sun, sinking into the sea, had to pass through this dungeon from the western edge of the Earth to the east, and in the morning, rising from the sea to the firmament, again begin its daylight path along it.

The basis of how people represented the Earth in Babylon were observations of natural phenomena. However, the Babylonians could not correctly interpret them.

Palestine

As for the inhabitants of this country, then on these lands reigned other ideas, different from the Babylonian. The ancient Jews lived in a flatland. Therefore, the Earth in their vision also looked like a plain, which was intersected by mountains in places.

Winds that bring with them a drought, then rains, occupied a special place in the beliefs of the Palestinians. Inhabited in the "lower belt" of the sky, they separated the "heavenly waters" from the surface of the Earth. Water, moreover, was also under the Earth, feeding from there all the seas and rivers on its surface.

India, Japan, China

Perhaps the most famous legend in our days, telling how ancient people imagined the Earth, was composed of ancient Indians. This people believed that the Earth actually has the shape of a hemisphere that rests on the backs of four elephants. These elephants stood on the back of a giant tortoise floating in the endless sea of milk. All these creatures wrapped a set of rings with a black cobra Sheshu, who had several thousand heads. These heads, according to the beliefs of the Indians, propped up the universe.

The land in the representation of the ancient Japanese was limited to the territory of the islands known to them. It was attributed to the cubic form, and the frequent earthquakes occurring in their homeland, were explained by the violence of the fire-breathing dragon, which lives deep in its bowels.

The inhabitants of Ancient China were confident that the Earth is a flat rectangle, in the corners of which are arranged four columns, propping up the convex dome of the heavens. At one time, one of the columns was bent by an angry dragon, and since then the Earth has moved to the east and the sky to the west. So the Chinese explained why all the heavenly bodies move from east to west, and all the rivers in their country flow to the east.

Aztecs and Maya

It is interesting to know how the ancient people who inhabited the American continent represented the Earth. Thus, the Maya people were confident that the Earth is in fact a square. From its center grew the original tree. In the corners, in strict accordance with the known sides of the world, four more such Tree-Worlds grew. The Eastern Tree was red, the color of the morning sunset, the northern one - white, the western - black as night, and the southern - yellow, like the Sun.

Carefully watching the movements of the heavenly bodies, Mayan astronomers noticed that each of them has its own way. From here came the conclusion that each luminary moves along its "layer" of the sky. In all, the "heavens" in the Mayan beliefs were thirteen.

To another ancient people of America, the Aztecs, the Earth was seen by five squares, arranged in staggered order. In the very center was the earth's firmament with the gods, it was surrounded by water. The other four sectors making up the world had their own characteristic features, colors, were inhabited by special plants and animals.

Ancient Greeks

In the most ancient representations of the Greek population about the Earth, it is referred to as a convex disk, similar to the shield of a warrior. Above it is a firmament of copper, along which the Sun moves. It was believed that the land on all sides is surrounded by a river - the Ocean.

Over time, the vision of the Greeks of the Earth underwent a change. The scientist Anaximander, who lived in the fourth century BC, considered it "the center of the universe" and came to the conclusion that the constellations in the sky are moving in a circle.

The famous Pythagoras first expressed the idea that the Earth has the shape of a sphere. And Aristarkh Samosky, who lived in Greece more than 2300 years ago, concluded that it is our planet that rotates around the Sun, and not vice versa. However, his contemporaries did not believe him, and after the death of Aristarkh, his discoveries were quickly forgotten.

As people represented Earth in the Middle Ages

With the development of technology and shipbuilding, people began to travel more and more distant, expanding geographical knowledge, drawing up more and more detailed maps. Gradually began to gather evidence, which allows to draw a conclusion about the spherical shape of the Earth. Europeans have especially succeeded in this in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries.

About five hundred years ago the Polish scientist-astronomer Nikolai Copernicus, observing the stars, established that the Sun is the center of the Universe, and not the Earth. Almost 40 years after the death of Copernicus, his ideas were developed by the Italian Galileo Galilei. This scientist was able to prove that all the planets of the solar system, including the Earth, actually rotate around the Sun. Galileo was accused of heresy and forced to renounce his teaching.

However, the Englishman Isaac Newton, who was born a year after Galileo's death, later succeeded in discovering the law of universal gravitation. On his basis, he explained why the moon revolves around the Earth, and planets with satellites and numerous celestial bodies turn around the Sun.