Pretty much sums up my question.
2006-12-12 18:57:53 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
a whole other world, the underworld
2006-12-12 19:00:55 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are cosmologies involving turtles, elephants and the Earth sitting in a sea, but the idea that people in the middle ages thought the world was flat is mostly untrue. Pythagoras suggested the Earth was round in about 500BC, mainly for aesthetic reasons, and 100 years later Plato listed the scientific proofs for a spherical Earth.
The idea that people believed in a flat Earth seems to come from a book called The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, written by Washington Irving in 1828. It contains a fictional account of a conversation between Columbus and an "ignorant savage" where Columbus explains that the Earth is not flat. I suppose believing it gave people a feeling of superiority.
2006-12-12 19:17:06 · answer #2 · answered by Iridflare 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think they mostly believed that you fell of into space (or some similarly awful fate) if you came to the "edge" of the world. I don't recall ever reading any speculation as to the other side - maybe that's where they believed hell was??
2006-12-12 19:07:22 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The back of a turtle. It was believed that a big turtle carried the earth.
2006-12-12 19:00:12 · answer #4 · answered by modulo_function 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There was no "other side". The earth went down forever.
2006-12-12 19:13:02 · answer #5 · answered by Mez 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no one believed there was anything on the other side.
they believe if you fall off the edge of the earth, you will continue falling into space.
2006-12-12 19:03:31 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The chicken.
2006-12-12 19:06:47 · answer #7 · answered by Total Eclipse Of The Sun 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
butter
2006-12-12 19:00:55 · answer #8 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hell.
2006-12-12 19:05:07 · answer #9 · answered by Angela M 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋