Who first presented the idea o a spherical earth?

Question

was it Pythagoras? Galileo? someone else? please help

Answer 1

Pythagoras is the one credited with first proposing the idea of a spherical earth, even though he did so more for harmonic and asthetic reasoning than for the fact that he knew it was a circle.

The earlier Mesopotamians first used a circular representation for mapping purposes, but they still seemed to point towards a flat earth...or at least the research seems to point to that belief.

Within the next two hundred years after Pythagoras, both Plato and Aristotle were teaching the idea of a round earth as well. Aristotle may have been the first to start providing valid arguements, or evidence if you want to look at it that way, that the earth was indeed spherical. He used the ability to see stars in Egypt that could not be seen in Greece, and the shadow of the Earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse as evidence. And as someone pointed out, Eratosthenes was the first person to come up with an accurate measurement of the earth's size, and he was amazingly close considering how he did it.

Answer 2

In the ancient past there were varying levels of belief in a flat Earth, with the Mesopotamian culture portraying the world as a flat disk afloat in an ocean. The spherical form of the Earth was suggested by early Greek philosophers, a belief espoused by Pythagoras.

Prior to circumnavigation of the planet and the introduction of space flight, belief in a spherical Earth was based on observations of the secondary effects of the Earth's shape (such as observation that shadows at noon were at difference angles at different distances from the equator, plus the shape of the Earth's shadow on the moon during a partial eclipse).

Answer 3

It was determined by the ancient Greeks. It took the oppression of the dark ages to bury that knowledge for 900 years. Then it was revived in the Renaissance.

Pythagoras, in the 6th century BC, proposed that the earth was a sphere, but this was motivated by mysticism, not science.

Eratosthenes knew the earth was a sphere and calculated the size of the earth, (scientifically), in the third century BC. He was within 7% of the correct figure. Pretty darn good for those days.

Answer 4

An American in about 500 A.D.