The World is Flat.

Here is my thought of the day.

Let say the Egyptians were pretty clever people as they were clearly able to understand the stars and planets in the sky. Also the mayan people understood numbers which they used the stars for. This may not be proven but why is it only till relatively lately was it understood that the earth was round?

Surly if the these clever people understood the stars and planets then they would know the earth and the other planets are round? Did humans forget for a few thousand years? I just don't see how that's possible.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Maybe the Egyptians and Mayans did know it was round, but we had a gap in our history so it was only recently (in comparison) that we could prove this.........With the knowledge they had with the stars and so fourth they would almost certainly know this.
Maybe one day more artefacts or drawings will be discovered that will show they very well knew about the planet.

reply to post by gareth01422


It's been known since at least the Greeks that the Earth is round. even throughout the Dark Ages almost every scholar was in agreement that the Earth was round. It is only through fictitious biographies on Columbus that people started to think that he is the one that discovered the Earth was round. In fact Columbus knew the Earth was round, but he thought it was much smaller than it actually was.

As I understand it (forget where I learned this, so going off of memory) the flat world concept arose during the dark ages and was a fad of sorts started by the overall lack of any proper education.

reply to post by gareth01422




There were a fair amount of ancient peoples who alluded to or thought that the earth was round.

en.wikipedia.org...


There is a lot more info around on the web.

Good question. I think the kind of knowledge that the Egyptians had sort of vanished from history for a long while, only to be discovered again in the 1800s. But I'm sure there were plenty of folk who did know the truth through the ages, probably even kids could work out that the world was round. It probably went against whatever was common "knowledge" in the dark ages and so became a taboo subject.

"THE EARTH IS ROUND!!!"

"No it's not, you madman. You can't go around saying crazy stuff like that, It's..it's.. BAD. BURN HIM!!"

reply to post by wigit


Here is an article on the Myth of the Flat Earth. I will draw your attention specifically to this quote.

there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference

Myth of the flat Earth

This guy calculated the size of the earth in ancient times remarkable accurate.

He was called: Eratosthenes

WOW guys, some great information for me to read there.

Thanks again.

Would it be fair to say that religion is he main cause of the flat earth BS?

reply to post by gareth01422


No that isn't fair. Only the people in power to make it a 'fact' are responsible. only they happen to be religious

Originally posted by gareth01422
Would it be fair to say that religion is he main cause of the flat earth BS?

Dante's great religious poem "the Divine Comedy" assumes a round earth.
The poet goes all the way down into Hell, reaches Satan at the centre, then passes Satan and finds himself climbing upwards again. Round earth taken for granted.
I think the Church had no problem with a round earth. As long as the earth was at the centre of things- that's where Galileo went wrong.

reply to post by gareth01422


Actually, in this case no. As I've already posted pretty much every Christian scholar since the fall of the Roman Empire has stood by a spheric Earth model. It started with Washington Irving's fictional biography of Christopher Columbus which was published in 1828. This was followed by Jean Antoine Letronne in 1834 who published a book in 1834 in which he misinterpreted the writings of Church fathers from the middle ages. The final major player was William Whewell who found two scholars from the Middle Ages that seem to have believed in a flat earth and he used these two examples to show that people in the Middle Ages believed in a flat earth, despite the fact that few if any other accounts have been found that espouse the belief in a flat earth.

reply to post by gareth01422



As-Salāmu `Alayk(a) —Peace be upon you

124.000 messengers of Allah(God) has been sent around each and every land since the first man putted his foot on this earth, we call him Adam(peace be upon him) and one after another messenger, informed people with science, and especially signs, moral code, the signs of judgement day, the signs of science...

The reason why they where very clever is that they was inspired by other people that was informed at that time by the messengers of God.

And when they recieved the correct info, the mayan and the people of Pharao, they added some extra science, which later on ended up wrong like the earth, but i totaly agree that they had correct info, and i don´t believe that they got it from a normal person, but rather a messenger of God...



In the quran it was revealed 1400 years ago that the earth is egg-shaped, and today we can see that with modern technology.

And observe, islam is not 1400 years old, it has been here since the first man stepped on the earth.



And God knows best...

reply to post by gareth01422


The bible says the earth is flat. Well, not in those words, but it would have to be in order for Satan to take Jesus to the top of a mountain where he can see all the earth at one time.

In order for the church to admit the earth was round, they would have to admit the bible is wrong. Up until recent history, the church silenced (murdered) anyone who spoke out against the bible or the teachings of the church. That is why so many people "believed" for so many years that it was flat, because if they admitted they knew it was round, they'd be killed.

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


Good one

I wouldn't blame religion per se either. Furthermore, those people that happened to be religious, many of most zealous ones, were also fairly uneducated extroverts.

Besides, as OP mentioned, many other cultures and people knew that Earth wasn't flat. It was mainly those religious pious uneducated extroverts, who by the expense and help of stupid sheeps, gained too much influence in europe and elsewhere. Shame really, but surely they will burn in hell, eh?

-v

reply to post by dalepmay


Once again no they didn't Many Christian scholars in the Middle Ages were more than willing to admit the Earth was round. While the Church may have tried to suppress certain scientific discoveries in the past, this was not one of them. It was a myth perpetuated by three 19th century writers.

The world has been thought of as being round for a very long time, and by 240BC Eratosthenes. had calculated the circumference of it fairly accurately.

I've posted this before but Stephen Fry explains it better then me so

reply to post by Xcalibur254


Oh dear...

What does that mean regarding the Columbus discovering the Americas story ?

Everyone is pretty much right in this thread. The earth was believed to have been spherical for centuries. And, yes, even by the religious.

You might be confused with geocentric beliefs (the earth being at the center of the universe/solar system). That did take a while for that belief to die out in some cultures.

Hi... new member here.

I recall seeing a documentary which discussed the possibilty that the locations of ancient megalithic sites might indicate that the globe was surveyed as far back as 15,000 years ago. Of course that theory flies in the face of modern acheological dogma.

Some allegedly ancient maps seem to indicate that the earth was known to be round:

Forbidden History

~Blarney