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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5338046 No.5338046 [Reply] [Original]

When did people stop believing the Earth was flat? Surely they didn't believe that nonsense in Columbuses time?

>> No.5338047

As soon as they built ships and saw that the mast was the last thing to disappear over the horizon.

>> No.5338057

>>5338046
it's a myth that any culture actually thought the earth was flat. just think about how stupid it would be to actually think that.

>> No.5338059

Learned people always kinda understood that, stupid people didn't.

>> No.5338063

>>5338046
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

they even calculated the circumference quite accurately, it was the dark christian medieval times that fucked up

>> No.5338064

>>5338046
By Columbus' time almost everyone knew that the earth was round. The issue Columbus had was that he vastly underestimated the size of the Earth, contrary to what most scholars at the time had known. And of course, nobody in Europe(other then some long dead Vikings) knew that the American continents were in the way.

>> No.5338072

>>5338046
Anyway, most people stopped believing in a flat earth around the Classical Age of Greece, since, among other things, Greek sailors saw that when a ship appears on the horizon, the bottom of the ship is obscured due to the earth's curvature. The idea of the earth as a sphere was pretty widespread by the time Christianity showed up. Funnily, the Chinese still thought the Earth was flat until the fucking 1600s when Jesuit missionaries showed up and proved the earth was round.

>> No.5338100

>>5338063

Wrong, atheist fucktard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUP3a54Tpwk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

>> No.5338107

>>5338100
>if you're not a christian, you're an atheist

>> No.5338127

>>5338046
The issue with Columbus was how 'large' the earth was, He made calculations that made gauged the planet about 2/3 the size it is know today.

This is why people of the time thought Columbus was crazy, because if you remove North America and South America from the map and the pacific becomes an enormous ocean that would take much longer to traverse.

>> No.5338163

If I remember right, an American author (The Sleepy Hollow guy?) in the 1800s wrote some fictional account of Columbus' voyages. He spiced it up and included some obvious nonsense about the Earth being flat. Somehow, it was then incorporated into U.S. history textbooks. I was certainly taught this "Columbus' sailors were worried about sailing off the edge of the Earth" bullshit as a kid. It makes me a little bit angry to think about it.

>> No.5338172

>>5338163
>I was certainly taught this "Columbus' sailors were worried about sailing off the edge of the Earth" bullshit

Is there necessarily no truth to that?. It's not like common sailors would be educated people.

>> No.5338208

>>5338172
I included that 'fact' as representative of the whole story I was shoveled. It's been a while, but they mentioned Columbus shopping around various European royalty for a sponsor, trying to convince them that the Earth was round, etc.

I can certainly imagine an ignorant sailor of the time believing the world is flat, but excerpts from relevant books say that this isn't the case. Toby Lester - The Fourth Part of the World.

I got autobanned last week for posting a link explaining how to interface with an LCD in /diy/, so I won't even attempt to post links here anymore.

>> No.5338220

some people still believe

>> No.5338224

>>5338172
http://history-world.org/christopherdocs.htm

Two sailors tried sabotaging the journey. Only known dislike of the journey.

>> No.5339939 [DELETED] 

bump