Land
Culture

Many humans see land as a source of "spirituality, inspiration, and beauty." Many also derive a sense of belonging from land, especially if it also belonged to their ancestors. Various religions teach about a connection between humans and the land (such as veneration of Bhumi, a personification of the Earth in Hinduism, and the obligation to protect land as hima in Islam), and in almost every Indigenous group there are etiological stories about the land they live on. For Indigenous peoples, connection to the land is an important part of their identity and culture, and some religious groups consider a particular area of land to be sacred, such as the Holy Land in the Abrahamic religions.

Creation myths in many religions involve stories of the creation of the world by a supernatural deity or deities, including accounts wherein the land is separated from the oceans and the air. The Earth itself has often been personified as a deity, in particular a goddess. In many cultures, the mother goddess is also portrayed as a fertility deity. To the Aztecs, Earth was called Tonantzin —"our mother"; to the Incas, Earth was called Pachamama —"mother earth". The Chinese Earth goddess Hou Tu is similar to Gaia, the Greek goddess personifying the Earth. In Norse mythology, the Earth giantess Jörð was the mother of Thor and the daughter of Annar. Ancient Egyptian mythology is different from that of other cultures because Earth (Geb) is male and the sky (Nut) is female.

Ancient Near Eastern cultures conceived of the world as a flat disk of land surrounded by ocean. The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts reveal that the ancient Egyptians believed Nun (the ocean) was a circular body surrounding nbwt (a term meaning "dry lands" or "islands"). The Hebrew Bible, drawing on other Near Eastern ideas, depicts the Earth as a flat disc floating on water, with another expanse of water above it. A similar model is found in the Homeric account of the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."

The spherical form of the Earth was suggested by early Greek philosophers, a belief espoused by Pythagoras. Contrary to popular belief, most educated people in the Middle Ages did not believe the Earth was flat: this misconception is often called the " Myth of the Flat Earth ". As evidenced by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, the European belief in a spherical Earth was widespread by this point in time. Prior to circumnavigation of the planet and the introduction of space flight, belief in a spherical Earth was based on observations of the secondary effects of the Earth's shape and parallels drawn with the shape of other planets.
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