this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
248 points (90.8% liked)
Today I Learned (TIL)
6165 readers
78 users here now
You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
/c/til is a community for any true knowledge that you would like to share, regardless of topic or of source.
Share your knowledge and experience!
Rules
- Information must be true
- Follow site rules
- No, you don't have to have literally learned the fact today
- Posts must be about something you learned
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But that doesn't explain how we treated to call this planet by the name we give to dirt. We could have called the earth "rocks" or "sand" instead, but no. When did we realise we are sitting on a floating ball of dirt?
The dirt is what makes plants grow, which is kinda important to people of all cultures.
OK, but that doesn't answer my question of how it became the name of the planet.
Rough approximation: Earth as opposed to sky, becomes earth as opposed to sea, becomes earth as in the known world as opposed to the places we don't settle (sea, sky, hell, etc.), becomes the place we live as opposed to Mars or Betelgeuse.
We walk on dirt, we live on dirt, we live on Dirt.
That's a pretty good and likely summary, thanks!