The Element

Ancient Greek thought of what is the origin of everything, scholar of metallurgy said that the world was built by the four elements: air, fire, water, and soil; while the Chinese said that the main elements are fire, water, gold, wood, and soil. The similarity between them is both of their deduction contains fire, water, and soil.


Modern metallurgy.

Fire, water, and soil are the most common thing in our daily life. Fire, a gas that needs enough heat, a combustion helper, and enough Oxygen to fire up, was discovered by human in Stone Age. It maybe started by a lighting bolt, but ancient people still don’t understand what fire made of. Like the Sun, fire symbolizing heat. I think this is why people listed fire as their main element. They know the importance of heat.

Water, soil are important for corps growing, people choose what are important for them as the main elements which brought life to this world. But air contain many types of element (as we known in modern discovery), plus it is untouchable, people cannot study it easily. But sometime when some chemical change occurs in the air, the air’s color may change. The air is a sensitive thing; Greeks do many times of experience to discover its profile, this maybe the factor of air being a part of the main elements.

Some gods are the guardian of an element, the elemental god. Like the sea gods in each civilization, they are the symbol of water. People admired the ocean for a long period; the deep blue sea gave them the space of imagination. Fire god, like the guardian (I don’t really know his name) who guards the volcanic place in Norse tale.

Actually, the origins of life forms are Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Sulphur, and Phosphorus (you must remember this six). Human took a long time to discover things, starts with the first step: imagine.