I actually did some study of the old maps and the history of the round world and I found a really strange reality that most people do not know. When Columbus thought the earth was round he actually thought that it was round and flat, as in he could travel west to get east because the big flat world was like a big round pancake, and Columbus did not mean a globe, as a globe is not really round and they did not envision a globe. Certainly the old Greeks were the same that they saw the earth as round but it only meant flat and round. Map of the world like this = Round and Flat. There is also no record that Columbus ever found out that the earth was a globe instead of being round. That is circumventing the point but I am happy to clarify it again. Columbus did know the earth was round and he was mistaken in that knowledge. The earth is NOT round, and it never was round, and when people believed the earth to be round then they meant - Flat and Round but not a globe or sphere. Being "round" means only two (2) dimensional and round does not mean a globe or a sphere. In order to pre-understand the earth as a globe then the person had to have some knowledge of gravity, as in understanding a person on the south pole stands up instead of standing upside down. The point was "pre" as in "pre-understanding" about gravity because in those older days then going down under would mean being upside down. Today most people still can not explain why a person on the south pole is not upside down. Gravity makes so that the earth is not round, as gravity makes the earth to be straight-up-and-down at every point on the globe. People today just take it for granted because we came after and not "pre". At first the world being flat was simple and then figuring out that the earth was round (2 dimensional) was a theory that Columbus proved, and I do not know who it was that figured out the earth to be a globe or sphere. Isaac Newton in 1679 (that is 187 years after Columbus 1492) declared the earth to be a "oblate spheroid" which still meant people on the top side and not down below where a person would be upside down. As such Isaac Newton was on the right track but not quite there yet. If we add the third (3rd) dimension of depth to the 2 dimensional "round" then it becomes deep even if it is a million miles deep but it still remains round and not a globe. When the ancient people say that the earth is a globe or sphere then they are talking about the sky being the sphere which covers over top of the flat earth. Here is a picture from 1880 showing the view of a flat earth being inside of a sphere or globe = Flammarion.jpg The ancient Greeks saw the night time Constellations (Astrology) as the stars were on the edge of the globe which covers the flat earth. They might have had some ideas about the earth being round or a globe but they did not see anyone standing underneath without them being upside down. So even if they knew it was a globe they still expected to fall off the side if they traveled too far over. All I really say is that Columbus thought the world was round and even that he did not very well prove, and he did not think or prove the earth as a globe. It is possible that the ancient Greeks could have been much smarter (or better informed) then the pre-18th century Europeans, but knowing GRAVITY is the only way to understand why a person at the south pole is not upside down - and the Greeks did not know about that.
People like to cheer on that Columbus discovered that the earth is round. But the earth is NOT round. And Columbus himself was under the wrong impression that the earth was only flat and "round" as like a pancake. The truth is often stranger than fiction.
If Newton said it was an oblate spheroid then he was correct. The earth is wider at the equator because that is where your mom lives.
Many ancient peoples thought of the earth as a flat disc. Certain the biblical writers did, as did the Mesopotamians before them from whom they plagiarised many if not all of their ideas.(1) But, the Greeks at least did eventually work out that the earth is spheroid in shape.(2) Ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth (1) "The concept of a spherical Earth displaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth: In early Mesopotamian mythology, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean and surrounded by a spherical sky," (2) "Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer from Hellenistic Libya (276–194 BC), estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC. He had heard that in Syene the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice whereas in Alexandria it still cast a shadow. Using the differing angles the shadows made as the basis of his trigonometric calculations he estimated a circumference of around 250,000 stades. The length of a 'stade' is not precisely known, but Eratosthenes' figure only has an error of around five to fifteen percent.[19][20][21] Eratosthenes used rough estimates and round numbers, but depending on the length of the stadion, his result is within a margin of between 2% and 20% of the actual meridional circumference, 40,008 kilometres (24,860 mi). Note that Eratosthenes could only measure the circumference of the Earth by assuming that the distance to the Sun is so great that the rays of sunlight are essentially parallel."
I agree that the Greeks were very smart, but they also saw the entire globe as being help up on the back of their God Atlas, see picture = HERE. That is more accurate then the Europeans at the time of Columbus, but the Greeks did NOT understand gravity as in some person being on the southern half of the globe without being upside down and so the ancient Greek globe was very similar to the "oblate spheroid" of Isaac Newton in 1679 which was 187 years after Columbus 1492. It was oblate so then the globe was flat on top so people would be standing upright on the broad top side and not upside down. Without the knowledge of gravity then most people (including people today) can not explain how a person on the southern globe are standing upright. I see this as a very interesting reality that the circumstances of our planet is much more complicated then is commonly known.
Whether someone can grasp the idea of gravity in this day and age seems to depend on how closely they've paid attention in science classes Interesting point about Greek cosmology, though. I do have to wonder how they reconciled a spheroid Earth with a lack of understanding of gravity. I haven't read any classical Greek texts about that.
Actually, the concept of gravity, if not a sophisticated physical understanding of it, was well-known in antiquity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theory In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that ... the cause of the downward motion of heavy bodies, such as the element earth, was related to their nature, which caused them to move downward toward the center of the universe, which was their natural place. Conversely, light bodies such as the element fire, move by their nature upward toward the inner surface of the sphere of the Moon. Thus in Aristotle's system heavy bodies are not attracted to the earth by an external force of gravity, but tend toward the center of the universe because of an inner gravitas or heaviness.[1][2] In Book VII of his De Architectura, the Roman engineer and architect Vitruvius contends that gravity is not dependent on a substance's "weight" but rather on its "nature". If the quicksilver is poured into a vessel, and a stone weighing one hundred pounds is laid upon it, the stone swims on the surface, and cannot depress the liquid, nor break through, nor separate it. If we remove the hundred pound weight, and put on a scruple of gold, it will not swim, but will sink to the bottom of its own accord. Hence, it is undeniable that the gravity of a substance depends not on the amount of its weight, but on its nature.[3] Brahmagupta, the ancient Indian astronomer and mathematician, held the view that the earth was spherical and that it attracts things. It was well known that the Earth was a sphere very early on, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC, but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC, when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given. The paradigm was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's expedition's circumnavigation (1519−1522). So note that we had a circumnavigation of the earth in 1519, just 27 years after Columbus' voyage. More details on Christian Europe's understanding of the Earth's shape: The monk Bede (c. 672–735) wrote in his influential treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time, that the Earth was round. He explained the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature. It is, in fact, set like a sphere in the middle of the whole universe." (De temporum ratione, 32). The large number of surviving manuscripts of The Reckoning of Time, copied to meet the Carolingian requirement that all priests should study the computus, indicates that many, if not most, priests were exposed to the idea of the sphericity of the Earth. Ælfric of Eynsham paraphrased Bede into Old English, saying, "Now the Earth's roundness and the Sun's orbit constitute the obstacle to the day's being equally long in every land." Bede was lucid about earth's sphericity, writing "We call the earth a globe, not as if the shape of a sphere were expressed in the diversity of plains and mountains, but because, if all things are included in the outline, the earth's circumference will represent the figure of a perfect globe... For truly it is an orb placed in the center of the universe; in its width it is like a circle, and not circular like a shield but rather like a ball, and it extends from its center with perfect roundness on all sides." During the High Middle Ages, the astronomical knowledge in Christian Europe was extended beyond what was transmitted directly from ancient authors by transmission of learning from Medieval Islamic astronomy. An early student of such learning was Gerbert d'Aurillac, the later Pope Sylvester II. Saint Hildegard (Hildegard von Bingen, 1098–1179), depicted the spherical earth several times in her work Liber Divinorum Operum. Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 – c. 1256 AD) wrote a famous work on Astronomy called Tractatus de Sphaera, based on Ptolemy, which primarily considers the sphere of the sky. However, it contains clear proofs of the earth's sphericity in the first chapter. Many scholastic commentators on Aristotle's On the Heavens and Sacrobosco's Treatise on the Sphere unanimously agreed that the earth is spherical or round. Grant observes that no author who had studied at a medieval university thought that the earth was flat. The first terrestrial globes were created in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries BC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe#History The sphericity of the Earth was established by Greek astronomy in the 3rd century BC, and the earliest terrestrial globe appeared from that period. The earliest known example is the one constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC. Early terrestrial globes depicting the entirety of the Old World were constructed in the Islamic world.[4][5] According to David Woodward, one such example was the terrestrial globe introduced to Beijing by the Persian astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, in 1267.[6] The earliest extant terrestrial globe was made in 1492 by Martin Behaim (1459–1537). So to think Columbus was not aware that the Earth was a globe defies belief.
Columbus like most educated people at the time he sailed knew that the earth was sphere. People didn't think the earth was flat. The earth is actually kind of pear shaped.
The problem is that people (including Wikipedia) give the ancient ideas a modern interpretation. The ancient philosophers might have guessed that the earth was a sphere but that always meant mostly flat and round on the top side and NOBODY on the bottom side where it would be upside down. Not the Greek and not Columbus ever figured any person on the underside as there it would be upside down.
At least some ancient Greeks worked out that the earth is not flat as per the OP. Evidence 1. Shadows of different length as expressed previously. 2. People on land could see the top of a ship before they could see the bottom. Both of these could only be true if the earth was spheroid in shape. Also that map in the was probably drawn early 1700s as it has all of Australia except the east coast. And they knew how to work out longitude.
Um, nonsense. Here is a globe created around 150 BC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crates_of_Mallus#/media/File:Crates_Terrestrial_Sphere.png Stop spouting nonsense.
That is nonsense. There never was any globe created around 150 BC. Wiki is talking about a book which makes that claim, but the claim is ridiculous.
The part missing in that knowledge is the human fear because when they saw the earth was curved THEN they became afraid of falling off. The other missing part is that the ancient Greeks could not have imagined a person down under as anything but upside down. That map was late dated yes, but it was only to demonstrate the meaning of = Flat and round. Columbus had a flat map in 1492 and all he envisioned was a round circle going around the flat map and thereby a flat and round earth. He never even dreamed of a globe or a sphere or of standing upright while on the underside of the map. When Columbus discovered that the earth was round then that only meant a round and flat surface.
Each person is to use their own brain and intellect and thereby establish their own evidence. There is lots of such info in the OP for any open mind. I myself found this out by reading history books, and there is no substitute for each person doing their own homework. The fact that the earth is NOT round is just an interesting piece of trivia, for those who can appreciate it.
From your research, did any of the ancients who believed the earth to be flat, or flat and round (pancake-like) have any estimates of the thickness of the entire earth from the surface to wherever they perceived the bottom to be?
No to the bottom. As far as I can tell no one ever even cared about the depth, as most cultures just saw some form of a "Hell" underneath, as they saw death and the grave and they were terrified of the underworld. And it is also a big point that only a very few people would ever even care to wonder, just as the human mentality of today, most people are only concerned about their work or their family or local customs and most people do not care about the world we live on. An ancient fisherman only wanted fish and was afraid of drowning and did not care if the sun circled the earth or not. And most people today can not explain why a person on the South Pole is not standing upside down, and we are thought to be the educated civilization.
Nonsense. The sphericity of the Earth was well known at least as far back as Aristotle. The way ships disappeared over the horizon (hull first, sails last), the change in apparent altitude of transiting stars depending on latitude, and the circular shape of the Earth's shadow on the face of the Moon during lunar eclipses were all well known in ancient times, and all were correctly attributed to the sphericity of the Earth. Both latitude and longitude were known in ancient times and appear in ancient geographies of Ptolemy and Posidonius. Ancient measurements of both latitude and longitude are well known (and were well known to ancients). The fact that local times differed from place to place, depending on longitude, had been observed in eclipses during ancient times and was correctly attributed to longitude differences on a spherical Earth. Columbus himself was a widely read autodidact, was familiar with all of the ancient geographies, and was well aware that the Earth was spherical, as were all educated men of Europe during that era. The notion that Columbus realized that the world was round while his contemporaries thought it was flat, is a myth wholly invented by latter-day "historians" who didn't know what they were talking about. See: Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1991). Inventing the flat earth: Columbus and modern historians. New York: Praeger.
Oh right. Ancient people didn't know about gravity. When you dropped things in ancient times, they didn't fall. There was no such thing as UP and DOWN back then. Sheesh.
Unsatisfied with telling us all what the ancient Greeks couldn't possibly have known, you now opine on what the ancient Greeks couldn't possibly have imagined. The only failure of imagination here is your own.
The old Greeks never even left the Mediterranean and for the most part the Greeks never went outside of the Aegean Sea. I have read enough Greek to know that if they had known about the earth then they would have specifically said so in great details as they did in all of the other subjects which they saw their selves as so smart. It might be true that they COULD have figured it out - but they did not. As with the Greeks - if Columbus had known or discovered or proved that the earth was a globe or sphere then he would have said so, and Columbus was a braggard who took pride in his accomplishments and he reported back to the King and Queen of Spain so he would not leave out that piece of detail as if it would be of small importance or of small interest. If Columbus had discovered the earth to be a sphere then he would have said so - and he would have trumpeted it from the roof tops. My point is that the one (1) thing the ancients knew very well was the UP and DOWN. They knew that they were standing upright, and anything down below would have to be upside down. Yes - that they knew very well indeed. But knowing that UP and DOWN is a very long way away from understanding the gravity of the earth.
that is not evidence. sorry that is not true if you make a claim it is up to you to back it up No it is ranting of the ill-informed.
