Who do you think was the first person to discover that the earth was round rather than flat?

Question

Who do you think was the first person to discover that the earth was round rather than flat?

Answer 1

Pythagoras was one of the first known philosopher to espouse the idea of a spherical Earth.

Answer 2

God

Answer 3

Well, the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round, and they also made a pretty good approximation of it's diameter and circumference.  Erastothenes used the angle of the sun at two different points to figure that one...  those crafty classical toga guys!

Cheers

Answer 4

Tee hee...probably him who fell off!!

Answer 5

Nomads walking across large plains and sailors approaching land would have noticed that mountains come up over the horizon, and others continue to do so the further you go.  The reason it took so long for it to be accepted is that the so-called brains of the world, the sages of the ancient world, rarely went anywhere, and who would take the word of a peasant or a sailor.  

It is ironic that various religious groups through the ages put restrictions on new ideas, and saw as heretical any notion that went against what they thought was God’s perfect world.  However, in the scheme of things, a sphere is the perfect object, and if there is a God, that’s how he would have arranged things.  

Answer 6

Maybe this guy:

http://www.geocities.com/dominorus/ica_s...

Answer 7

I believe the notion that ancient people thought that the world was flat comes from the tales of sailors, who warned that if you sailed too far you would sail off the edge of the earth. This stems from the fact that they navigated using star charts. But they only had star charts of the northern hemisphere. So if you sailed south of a certain point you would no longer have a means of navigating. Combine this with the fact that the African coast had a dangerous stretch of water just south of the point where the northern hemisphere star charts ended. So ships trying to follow the coast of Africa south were frequently lost. This led to the tales that ships sailing too far would sail off the edge of the world.

Answer 8

it wasnt "discovered" as we think of scientific discoveries, it was known by the most ancient of civilizations, because they were dependant on waterway travel, for trade(no cars, no roads)

an example of this is a quote from David, king of Israel in 950 b.c. "his(the Sun) circuit unto the ends of it(the heavens...from the line before)".  the earth is called a sphere, and has a "girth" which only something round can have.  Also the ancients studied the maps of the stars, and knew by the path they take ,from east to west, that the earth was turning, or the sky was turning...as old as written history, is how old the knowledge of the Earth's circle is.