In ancient times, almost all cultures were dominated by the geocentric view of the universe. According to the ancient peoples, the Earth was the center of the world, and the religious center of a particular state was considered the center of the Earth. For centuries and millennia, this opinion has not changed and only thanks to the development of astronomy and navigation has it changed and gradually acquired the framework that is familiar to modern man.
Instructions
Step 1
The Babylonians imagined the Earth in the form of a mountain, on the western slope of which their lands are located, to the south of them the sea, to the east - inaccessible mountains, over which, as it seemed to them, a man's foot did not cross. In the understanding of the ancient inhabitants of Babylonia, the world mountain was surrounded by the sea, which, like an overturned bowl, rests on the firmament.
Step 2
The inhabitants of central and northern Africa represented the entire Earth as a plain surrounded by low mountains. These peoples included various nomadic African tribes, including the ancient Jews. The Egyptians treated the concept of the Earth differently, they believed that below is the earth with plains and mountains, surrounded by water, and from above it is enveloped by the goddess of the sky.
Step 3
The inhabitants of Ancient Greece believed that the Earth was a small island in a huge ocean, as an option, the Earth was considered as an archipelago of islands. Later in the 6th century BC. thanks to the Greek philosophers Thales and Anaximander, the Greeks' view of the world changed. Thales represented the world in the form of an endless sea with a floating half of a bubble, the top of the bubble is the vault of heaven, the bottom is the earthly firmament.
Step 4
The ancient Chinese and Hindus had an interesting idea of the Earth. The Hindus believed that the earth was endless and covered with a sky with stars. Their presentation can be considered the oldest surviving to this day. The Chinese, unlike other peoples, represented the dry part of the earth in the form of a rectangle with mountains and plains, dotted with rivers and lakes. The Chinese had a convex firmament supported on special columns at the corners of the land rectangle.
Step 5
The most widespread theory of the world order is described in early Christian literature. The earth is located at the center of the universe, it is a bulging patch of land, located on the shell of a turtle. An option was to place the land on three whales, three elephants, or a turtle leaning on elephants or whales.
Step 6
The heliocentric system, i.e. a system of ideas about the world, the center of which is not the Earth, but the Sun, has surfaced in the minds of ancient thinkers more than once. It finds echoes in the writings of some ancient Greek philosophers, in later Egyptian and Babylonian texts. However, with the onset of our era, and in particular with the development of a new religion, heliocentrism was forgotten for centuries. Against this backdrop, names such as Giordano Bruno and Nicolaus Copernicus shine like stars against the dark night sky. And the fact that the Earth is a ball became clear to everyone only after Fernand Magellan's trip around the world.
