I've been reading up on the history of the flat Earth... is it a hypothesis? I'm not sure. Conception. Yes. That works. The flat Earth conception. Anyway, what struck me is that there really wasn't any idea of a flat Earth until the 19th century. Early myths and legends hinted at the idea of a flat Earth, but it was pretty well established by about 1000 BC that the Earth was a sphere, and no one seemed to be very bothered about it. Well there were a few quibbles in the Middle Ages about how there could be nothing standing on the Antipodes, since they would fall off, but hey, who says anything was standing there? But then all of a sudden Washington Irving shows up and says Columbus proved the Earth was round, and the next thing you know we have a Flat Earth Society.

I blame Washington Irving for this. OK. I like the guy. Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow were great chillers. But if he hadn't created this idea that the round Earth was some weird modern theory, like evolution or geocentrism, invented by godless scientists, then I really doubt there would be any flat Earthers today.

But there's more to it than that. Even among non-flat-Earthers (who, in defence of the human race, I'll grant are the majority), the idea that Columbus discovered that the world was round still persists. How is it possible that one bit of modern day legendmongering could create such a fundamental disconnection between the modern world and three thousand years of continuous history?

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

I keep seeing people say that people think that, but I've never seen a single example of someone who actually thinks it.

1000BC?
See Eratosthenes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
"Around 240 BC"
John

Eratosthenes already knew the Earth was a sphere; Plato and Aristotle had offered good enough proofs two hundred years before Eratoshtenes measured its circumference, and Pythagoras held a belief in the spherical Earth even earlier than that (though what proofs he had for his position, if any, are unknown).

I've met a few. My grandfather for one. He mentioned that Columbus's crew throught they were going to fall off the edge of the world, and when I explained the truth to him, he just ignored it, and then said the exact same thing a week later. My stepmother called me up once and asked me "who" discovered the world was round, and when I said that no one person can claim to have discovered it, since it has been known since antiquity, she refused to accept it.

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Thinking about this, I'm surprised nobody has ever cited ancient depictions of heavenly bodies as basically round. Wouldn't that indicate that the earliest people to think about such things seriously knew that heavenly bodies were round. Now it could be that they thought so, but didn't see the Earth as one of those bodies.

In all the Planet X drivel, don't the woo-woos cite ancient depictions of an "extra" body as proof of X, and doesn't that arguement insinuate knowledge of us being part of the population of bodies, and why would those ancients (and I'm talking about the smart ancients, not the we-don't-need-no-stinking-degree ancients) think our n't those , but that even Now that home body significantly different shaped than the others?

And what shape would they have assigned? A 2-dimensional plane? A 3-dimensional box with roughly the same proportions as a deck of playing cards? And why would they think you would fall off one side but not another?

I am moving toward agreement that the Flat Earth is more a modern goofy idea than anything else. When I was little and heard of it, i thought it was just some people being silly and having fun.

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"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Well, they could see the most obvious heavenly objects, the sun and moon, were round.

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"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Actually, those would be the ONLY heavenly objects they could see as round. Everything else was a point of light.

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There is a common assumption among modern people (even historians who should know better) that everyone who lived before the industrial revolution were primitive, superstitious savages. And of course, our modern system of miseducation does little or nothing to dispel such myths. In some cases it even spreads and reinforces them. Rumors and myths and old wives' tales often have more power to pursuade than plain, dry facts, particularly in historical subjects. Columbus was just flat-out wrong, until the day he died he thought he'd reached Asia (My Italian relatives would kill me if they heard me saying this). He thought the Earth was smaller than it is (based on one of the two prevailing round-Earth theories of the time) and that he'd sailed most of the way around it. How hitting an uncharted continent equals discovering the roundness of the planet in most people's minds puzzles me, but then most people's minds puzzle me anyway.

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Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

So, um... where does the sun go at night?

I would be curiious if any sailors out there have anything to add. It seems to me that sailing over long distances would drive home the sphericity of the earth. For that matter 'hull down' is a very old term, and offers a direct demonstration of the sea's (earth's) shape. I know that in the days of tall sail the rough distance to another ship far off was judged by how much of it stuck up over the horizon.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

well, as an ex-sailor.. nope, nothing to add.

However, IIRC the Egyptians - in the pyramid dynasties - knew not only that the earth was round, but also had a pretty good estimate of the diameter.

Middle ages Persia also knew the diameter of the earth pretty accurately.

I'm not sure about the ancient Chinese, but it wouldn't surprise me.

He's not credited with *discovering* the earth is round, but *proving* it. Other than that, yeah, it's boggled my mind for a long time. All he really proved is that the earth is not 16 thousand miles around (which just about every other civilization in the world knew already)

Well, I did a little searching from this post, because I wasn't sure why Eratosthenes originally thought the Earth was round, and the sun just wasn't closer to the Earth causing a differen angle of sunlight.
Found out, they always thought the sphere was a "Godly" shape, and Aristarchus, ptolemy and hipparchus all had ways of determining the size and distance of the sun and moon.
Pretty amazing for over 2000 years ago.


I don't even think he set out to prove the earth was round, only to determine a better route because the Earth was known to be round.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Well, Egyptian mythology had the sun crossing the sky from east to west, and then travelling through a tunnel under the earth to get back to the east again. That doesn't sound like a round earth to me.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
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I agree that this was his intent - it's us modern folk who have assigned the "prove the earth is round" bit to his escapade. I stated it badly, since he didn't prove anything other than there was a great big hunk of rock in the way of anybody travelling west to get to India.

Jim - I'm trying to find where I read that bit about the Egyptians (though I should point out that, as stated, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive).

Okay. In the meantime...

The Egyptians thought the earth a square, (with four corners) with mountains at the edge supporting the vault of the sky.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/flat/flateart.htm


As neighbors, the ancient Hebrews had the Egyptians to the southwest and the Babylonians to the northeast. Both civilizations had flat-earth cosmologies.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/flatearth.htm

Ancient Egyptian: The sky was a tent canopy stretched between mountains at the four corners of the Earth.
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/...measearth.html

Of course, the Egyptians may have revised their scientific thinking, and still retained their religous concepts. That's not without precedent.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Good links... and I was just considering this last bit myself.

I'm working on a theory......it's not easy

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But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about. jayutah

obviously it goes out