A FIRST YEAR COURSE IN 

 GENERAL SCIENCE 



CHAPTER I 

 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE 



1. The Earth and Other Bodies. Many thousand 

 years ago there were living in widely separated parts of 

 the earth various groups of people. Each group, knowing 

 nothing of the others, supposed that it contained all the 

 inhabitants of the earth. These early peoples thought that 

 the earth was flat and that if they should go beyond the 

 portion they knew about, they would reach the edge and 

 fall off. 



They had various beliefs as to what kept the earth in 

 place. Some thought it rested upon the shoulders of a 

 giant, and some upon a turtle's back; others believed it 

 was suspended from above. 



As men ventured farther from home, they found that 

 there were other peoples, that the earth was larger than 

 they had supposed, and that if they went far enough in 

 any direction, they came to the sea. They ventured out 

 upon the sea, but always returned over nearly the same 

 route by which they had gone. They still thought that 

 the earth was flat. 



Their ideas of the motion of the sun^and stars were as 

 simple as their other beliefs. They thought that these 

 bodies moved daily over the earth, coming from the 

 desert plain or from behind the mountains or out of the 

 ocean, according to their point of observation. 



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