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Indeed. The whole "everyone thought the Earth was flat" thing is just a modern myth. Yeah, average Joe the peasant probably thought it was flat but he's hardly a good standard to use to generalise the whole era.

Hell, simple logic shows that sailors at least must have known the Earth was round. How else could you explain other ships dissappearing over the horizon and then re-appearing?

Rochey wrote:...How else could you explain other ships dissappearing over the horizon and then re-appearing?

Gypsy magic.

Ah, but you see, the ones who believed that would fall victim to Darwin.

Fearing the Gypsy magic, they tie the suspected witch to the mast and begin to burn her.
Only then do they realise that the ship itself is actualy made of wood.

"Into the sea, lads!"

Rochey wrote:Ah, but you see, the ones who believed that would fall victim to Darwin.

Fearing the Gypsy magic, they tie the suspected witch to the mast and begin to burn her.
Only then do they realise that the ship itself is actualy made of wood.

"Into the sea, lads!"

Surprised this didn't turn up in a Monty Python skit.

Hee hee. "Build a bridge out of her?"

Even the ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round.

Yup... how else was the Earth supposed to be supported by those elephants.

stitch626 wrote:

Even the ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round.

Yup... how else was the Earth supposed to be supported by those elephants.

*shrug*

About the same as believing it's 6,000 years old in my book.

The biggest aspect of the flat Earth myth is that Columbus faced a virtual mutiny from men who thought they would sail off the edge of the world if they went too far. It's a story that is wrong in every possible respect.

Whilst ignorant farm folk may have thought the world was flat, sailors would be the last people who would think so. Not only that, but Columbus's mission was to find a way to reach India that avoided going around the bottom of Africa. He thought sailing across the Atlantic would let you reach India much faster, and to justify that he used the lowest-end estimates for the size of the world that he could find, numbers that everybody else thought were impossibly small. And Columbus was flat wrong about the size of the world. It just turned out that the thousands of miles of ocean everybody else knew was there had this great big continent in it...

Heh, he even thought he'd really discovered India for quite a while, which is why the natives of the US are still referred to as Indians even today.

GrahamKennedy wrote:...Heh, he even thought he'd really discovered India for quite a while, which is why the natives of the US are still referred to as Indians even today.

I know.

How! Sorry, couldn't resist.

Geez Ian, at least make it a real Native American language; yata'he!