ABSTRACT
In ancient Greek mythology, Gaia was the goddess of the Earth who created herself out of chaos at the dawn of creation. She was viewed as the mother of everything, including all the other Greek gods, with all mortal creatures being born of her flesh. The ancient Greeks saw the Earth as a flat disc surrounded by a river with the solid dome of heaven above. The disc rested on, and was inseparable from, Gaia's breast. This idea of Mother Earth or Earth Mother is very old and is widespread across the world's cultures. Mother Earth embodies nature, motherhood, fertility, bounty and creation. In many ways, the idea of Gaia, with its proposition that what most of us regard as inanimate could in fact be thought of as somehow alive, remains as provocative as it was in the 1970s. The hypothesis has given rise to many new areas of research about the Earth's physical, chemical, geological and biological processes.
