Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
have an opinion about the structure of the Earth, although there was
some confusion and difference of opinion as to where matter had come
from. Heraclitus (540-475 BC ), a philosopher of Ephesus, who was
happy in his own company and shunned others, and who built his
home on a dung-heap which provided underfloor heating, argued that
all matter originated in fire and that it was never destroyed but simply
reorganised. His contemporary Anaximenes (d. 504 BC ) held that mat-
ter originated in air, and he believed that the Earth was a flat disc
around which rotated the stars and planets. Later still Xenophanes
(560-478 BC ) regarded fossils as being proof that land had once been
submerged, and Empedocles (490-430 BC ) said that the Earth had devel-
oped in stages, that its core was molten - a fact not confirmed until the
middle of the nineteenth century - and that the Earth and all on it
was constantly in a state of change. These fifth-century BC philo-
sophers together with Pythagoras (580-500 BC ), best remembered for
his laws of trigonometry, resurrected the theory of a cyclical Great Year
that had been formulated by the Chaldeans. Herodotus (484-408 BC )
is best known for his nine-volume history of the known world.
However, he also made some geological observations and was aware
that land was produced by sedimentation, and calculated that it would
take 5,000 years for the Red Sea to silt up completely.
SCANDINAVIAN BELIEFS
In the northern latitudes of Scandinavia and Iceland, creation beliefs
drew on the physical characteristics of the land. Initally there was no
Earth, nothing but a large abyss. The first worldly place was a land of
mists and clouds called Niflheimwhich was situated in the north, and
in which spurted a great fountain that was the source of the Twelve
Rivers. These carried very cold water towards the south, where
Muspellsheim, the land of fire, was situated. Through this land flowed
rivers in which a strange material slowly hardened and set. When it
came into contact with the northern rivers a frost covered this mate-
rial, and slowly the frost began to fill the abyss. However, warm
southerly winds caused some of the ice to melt and from the
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