Terrestrial and celestial globes; their history and ... - 24grammata.com

Terrestrial and Celestial Globes.
the material spheres which they constructed. Crude and
simple, however, were their astronomical theories relative
to the shape, the structure, and the magnitude of the great
universe in which they found themselves placed/
Then too, as stated, there was something of interest to
the people of that early day in the simple problems of geography;
problems suggested by the physical features of their
immediate environment; problems arising as they journeyed
Fig. 1. Fragment Map of Egyptian
Gold Mines.
for trade or traffic, or the love of adventure, to regions now
near, now remote. Very ancient records tell us of the
attempts they made, primitive indeed most of them were,
to sketch in general outline small areas of the earth's sur-
face, usually at first the homeland of the map maker, but
to which they added as their knowledge expanded. The early
Egyptians, for example, as we long have known, made use
of rough outline drawings (Fig. i)' to represent certain
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