The world we live in and how it came to be [antikvár]

The Greeks believed that each day, when Aurora, the dawn, had opened the purple gates of night in the east. Phoebus Apollo, the sun-god, set out in his golden chariot across the sky. (From a painting on an old Greek vase.) Introduction—The Great Ball on Which We Live As It Was in the Beginning How did the earth, on which man lives, come to be? From the earliest days men have watched the sun rise in the east in the morning, travel overhead during the day, and set in the west at night. They have looked up at the night sky, with its millions of stars gleaming diamond-like in their deep blue setting. They have watched the seasons—spring, summer, autumn, winter—return with never-failing regularity. And always they have wondered about the earth on which they lived and how it came to be. Nature is full of wonders that man, ever since his first days on the earth, has been trying to understand. The early people had little real knowledge of the world, and so they made up stories to explain to themselves, as best they could,