Earth Globe -
Earliest Man’s First Frontier
Only
if the earth
globe was made years ago.It
is commonly known that man, since the dawn of time, has always wondered
about the “lights of the sky,” and marveled as to
how they moved the way they did. It was only a matter of time
that men began to wonder about the world they lived on, and how far
this land stretched, as to whether or not it stopped at the horizon, or
continued even further. This was also at a time long before
the thought of flight even captured the imagination of men, never mind
space flight, where man could see the whole earth for what it truly
is. During these times, it was only by climbing mountains
that man could get a better understanding as to what the shape of the
earth was, and as to how far this land actually went. Many
people during the rise of the Greek civilization have always described
the earth as a “flat disk, surrounded by the Ocean
River.” The Aztec’s, far away, on the
other side of the globe, believed, like the Greeks, that the earth was
flat, surrounded by a great circle of water around it.
If there would have been an earth
globe
it would of been less likely of a lack of understanding of our planet.
Lack of knowledge gave rise to some
of the myths we read about today, given birth by our
ancestors. Watching the sun, moon, and stars, in their
formations, and making their daily paths across the sky, not only
helped to create these myths, but even caused some of the ancient world
to believe that the world must be spherical, rather than flat, as has
been widely believed. One of the earliest
“thinkers” recorded, to date, that thought of such
a revolutionary idea, was a mathematician by the name of Eratosthenes,
who, circa 250 BC, noticed the shadows of two different cities to be
different, even though these shadows were cast at the same time of the
day. He thought that in order for this to be possible, the
earth must be curved.
It is with much thanks to thinkers such as Eratosthenes, and many
others like, and after him, that Europeans cartographers, or mapmakers,
began to make earth globes, long before explorers and conquerors sailed
the ocean blue. Martin Behaim, a German cartographer, in
1492, made the oldest earth globe known to man, that still exists, even
to this very day. It might be unnecessary to even mention,
but surely, it was only by the innovations of these great thinkers of
ancient times, that caused such great thinkers of the recent past, to
invent such a thing as an earth globe, that without such an invention,
would not have inclined men to travel farther than the eye could
see. It is wonderful to think that the earth globes made
available to us today not only teach us of our present, but also, the
greatness of our past, showing us the comparison, from the one parcel
of land civilization began on, to the vast expansion that we now call
home.
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