who first said the world was round?

Question

im doing an english paper and i need to know who was the first to say the world was round

Answer 1

As far as we can tell nobody ever considered the world to be any shape except round. The very earliest writings always describe the world as a dome or an upturned bowl or as a pile of soil or similar descriptions. So we can assume that people never thought the world was anythingbut round. That makes sense since anyone who climbed even a small mountain could see quite clearly that the world curves away equally on all sides. As a result they assumed it was shaped like a dome, with their location near the top.

I guess what you meant to ask is whow the firstperson was to say the world was spherical.The trouble is that very few scientific writing survived from the Perisan and Bbaylonian Empires so we can never say who the first person was to speculate on a spherical Earth. We know that by the time we get to Hellenistic Greece it seems to have been universally accepted that the world was a sphere. Given their advanced astronomy it seems almost certain that the Persians had figured out that the Earth was spherical. After all they saw that the moon was spherical.

So the person who first discovered that the world was round was probably some unnamed Persian or Babylonian astrologer 3, 000 years ago.

Answer 2

It's not really known who first proposed that the Earth was round.

Pythagoras, around 500 BC, proposed that the Earth was round, but only because of aesthetic and mystical reasons. A sphere was the most perfect shape from his viewpoint.

Others proposed it too, but not on scientific or logical grounds.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) said that in his day it was common knowledge that the Earth was round, so it certainly must have been long before his time. He used logical means by noting that ships slowly disappeared over the horizon.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene is the first one to give a reasoned estimate of the size of the Earth in 220 BC. His measurements were a bit off, but his logic was correct and would have given a more precise result if better methods of measurement were available.

Ferdinand Magellan is credited with being the first one to PROVE that the Earth was round by actually navigating around the world. He started out on August 10, 1519, according to the old Julian calendar, was killed Zebu in April of 1521, in the present day Philippines, and his men completed his voyage. However, some believe that the early Chinese may have been the first to circumnavigate the world, since they had maps of remote continents and a round Earth dating back prior to Magellan.

Columbus had nothing to do with it. He didn't set out to prove the world was round. It was alread commonly accepted by that date.

But nobody knows who the first to propose it was and there is still disagreement among scholars as to who proved it first also.
 

Answer 3

Some 300 years after Pythagoras wrote about Earth being round, another Greek, Eratosthenes, calculated the Earth’s radius. He used the distance between two cities and the angle of the sun’s rays made at midsummer at noon. His measurement turned out to be 15 percent too large, but still impressive, considering it was done over 2600 years ago.

Answer 4

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was the first to accurately estimate the Earth's diameter, around 220 BC.
Not sure exactly where or who but sources say it's the earliest recorded person who first said it .

Answer 5

Read Isaiah 40:22

Answer 6

According to some the world is flat. Do a paper on them. It's much more interesting.

But the first 'rounder' is generally considerd to be Pythagoras (6th century BC, Greece).

Answer 7

Every sailor who ever sailed the oceans knew the world was round.

Answer 8

Eratosthenes 276-194 B.C. Used the distance between Alexandria and Aswan in Egypt to caculate the Earth's circumference as 250,000 stadia. We do not know how long his stadia is exactly, but it is agreed he was close. I assumed by "the world" you meant earth.

Answer 9

Probably the guy that invented the wheel, shortly after he discovered how to make fire. No one can be sure who the first great thinker was to speculate that the earth is round - no matter what the history books say.

Answer 10

!00% sure its Bugs Bunny who discovered that the world is round...