[1]     Gaea or Gaia is the Greek Goddess for earth, and hence, a personification or a symbol of earth or the biosphere.  Other early religions had similar female figures, who like Gaia were gentle, feminine and nurturing, but also ruthlessly cruel to those who transgressed.  In Nepal, the Earth Goddess has many names, e.g.,  Prithvi, Bhu, or Vasundhara. Some modern biologists subscribe to the Gaia Hypothesis, which views the earth as a single organism. The scientific Gaia theory sees the Earth as a physiological system that is, in a sense, alive, and it denotes a systemic, cross-disciplinary, ecological approach to thinking about human culture as a part of nature, rather than apart from it.