Did people seriously think the earth was flat prior to 1492?

Answer 1

I think thats a myth. Mariners and traders and even nomads in the desert could not have missed noticing that all the stars rotated around Polaris which appeared to stay in one spot every night unless they moved north or south. If they were smart enough to navigate the distances they traveled hundreds and thousands of years before Columbus they would have noticed that they always came back home after supposedly falling off the edge of the earth.

Actually the only flat earthers were those inbred idiots known then and now as ROYALTY.

Answer 2

1492 was a little late for the majority of European society to still believe that earth was flat, although it was a widely held belief throughout human history. Once man began to take to the sea it was easy to prove some degree of roundness of the earth due to the fact that the mountains would rise out of the horizon, once hidden by the curve of the earth. The idea that people in that era believed "absolutely" that the earth was flat was exageraded in fictionalized accouts of Columbus' voyage which came after the fact, Most notably "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" by Washington Irving. Which was puplished in 1828. By the time of Columbus it was widely accepted in Europe that the earth was spherical.

The real problem facing Columbus was that no one accepted his estimates of the circumfrence of the Earth which were about half the of actual distance. There was no ship at the time that could carry enough supplies to go the whole way across the ocean without everyone starving to death.

He got to go anyway since Spain was looking for a competative edge in the trading world and the investment was well worth it if he was right. Of course Columbus' estimates where wrong and he and his whole crew would have died and Spain and the whole world would have been none the wiser but lucky for them there was a huge land mass that no one knew about in the middle of the ocean "The New World" blah blah blah you know how the story ends.

Naturally, there are still some crazy people who hold that the Earth is flat. If your looking for a good laugh check out this link.


http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/

Answer 3

If you mean, did people exist who thought it was flat - oh, I'm sure there were lots of ordinary people who thought so, people who never had had a chance of even rudimentary schooling. There were also different schools over the centuries, and a small minority among them thought so. But if you mean learned people, the answer is generally NO. It's a modern myth.

"By the time of Pliny the Elder in the 1st century, however, the Earth's spherical shape was generally acknowledged among the learned in the western world. /.../ The modern misconception that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat first entered the popular imagination in the nineteenth century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828. /.../ The Earth's circumference was measured around 240 BC by Eratosthenes. /.../ From Late Antiquity, and from the beginnings of Christian theology, knowledge of the sphericity of the Earth had become widespread. /.../ the dominant textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth /../ Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.[32] Also, "On the Sphere of the World", the most influential astronomy textbook of the 13th century and required reading by students in all Western European universities, described the world as a sphere.The Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, states clearly that the Earth is round - and that it is night on the other side of the Earth when it is daytime in Norway. /.../ The late development of European vernacular languages also provides some evidence to the contention that the spherical shape of the Earth was common knowledge outside academic circles. / Many Muslim scholars declared a mutual agreement (Ijma) that celestial bodies are round. / "

I have often heard people say that Galileo was persecuted by the Church because he claimed that the earth was round. But that's not true. There was no controversy at all about the earth being round - that was common knowledge by then. The hot stuff was that Galileo said that it was the earth that moved around the sun, and not vice versa.

Answer 4

Yes, but it was only an oblate spheroid from 1492 until 2001, since when it has become more of an elliptical form again, becoming ever flatter and more superficial.
Either that, or it's hard to see the the Earth beneath the throngs of civilisations nowadays.

Answer 5

No that is a common myth held by modern man. The world then was a seafaring world. Men on the sea have evidence everyday of the roundness. If you are at sea you will notice the top of a mast coming at you, then the lower parts as they come over the horizon. It is very common. It was not unknown to men back then. They were just as smart as we are. Go to the ocean sometime and watch as a ship comes over the horizon, you will see what I mean.

Answer 6

No - that's a myth invented by Washington Irving in the nineteenth century. If you read Dante, who wore c. 1300, you can see he envisages the world as a sphere.

Answer 7

yep afraid so, whats even worse: There are people who still believe it today,lol.
But back then they also thought if you were sick, you should be bled with leeches to remove the devil. So....they were a little off base on a lot of things, lol.

Answer 8

yes this was the commonly held belief some philosophers and astronomers had suggested that this wasn't the case but until the middle of the 15th century there was no proof and they were generally persecuted by the church for their beliefs

Answer 9

yes because they used to think there was an earth border and if you were there you could fall out!

Answer 10

no, it is known that the phoenicians and their maritime predecessors were aware of the circumfrence of the earth.